posted on June 2, 2001 05:07:36 PM new
I would say if your looking just at listing from user in the USA yes it is hard to believe if your looking at bid on alll yahoo auctions im sure there is a chance that they could be selling 60 thousand items weekly.
if you keep your self just inside this small box like window titled yahoo auctions you might find it hard to believe there is more then 6 people listing on yahoo world wide any more .
Yahoo sales were never ebay ever, they were very cyclical far more then ebay but there was and still is some areas where bidding and selling is on fire.
I stopped listing on yahoo pretty much when I got into a niche catagory Item I was selling Just werent getting the bids I could get on ebay in the area I sell.
as flooded as the catagory is on ebay people seem to be able to find my listings and I get bids use the same titles and discription on yahoo and the people just dont find me not sure if its a difference in the search or what SOme times it wasnt even the lack of veiws sometime the veiws were double what I get on ebay but the same item on ebay would be sold and yahoo item still waiting.
Dont get me wrong im not downing yahoo before fees it was free and in the year I sold there I did sell hundereds of items.
in fact sales on yahoo built the funding I built my ebay selling from my sell through on ebay is about 30% and some times more for a week but still made yahoo look Dead my best sales on each were november till january just before fees then bidding stopped pretty much and even at that the sell through for a week at that time was about 3%.
posted on June 2, 2001 08:00:55 PM new
Winning bids and paid bids are two different things. I wonder what percentage of the 30% never gets completed.
dendude
posted on June 2, 2001 09:56:28 PM new
[i]John10101 noted that Yahoo!Auctions now had some 200,000 listings and a 30% sell-through rate.
I'm having a hard time believing that Yahoo!Auctions is successfully closing 60,000 auctions every week.
How about you? [/i] - dimview
DimView,
Actually, it was Yahoo which recently reported they have a 31% success rate. Whether or not auctions that close successful get finalized is another question but I observed the ~30% rate personally so I believe it to be true. As the regulars on this board know, I said this months ago so you know I'm not just coming out of the blue just to back up their claim (after the fact) just for the heck of it.
Anyway, it's not that difficult to see it for yourselves. Just surf around some of their categories. You have to look just at the items closing within a day (sooner the better). If you don't do this and also look at the categories several days out that tricks the eye and mind because bidding tends to look sparser days out.
posted on June 3, 2001 08:29:35 AM new
John10101 >
Actually, it was Yahoo which recently reported they have a 31% success rate. Whether or not auctions that close successful get finalized is another question but I observed the ~30% rate personally so I believe it to be true.
Since every press article I've seen about Yahoo! mentions they declined to back up their statements with number I'd be interested in looking at the article with the 31% rate if its online.
Also, might that number include both U.S. and Japan auctions?
Anyway, it's not that difficult to see it for yourselves. Just surf around some of their categories. You have to look just at the items closing within a day (sooner the better). If you don't do this and also look at the categories several days out that tricks the eye and mind because bidding tends to look sparser days out.
I plan to look at a representative sample of categories and add up their current auctions, then look at closed auctions in those same categories and add up their the number of sales for the past week. Since Yahoo!Auctions has a relatively flatline of 190,000 to 200,000 auctions, I'll divide the total closed auctions by the totalcurrent auctions to get the approximate sell-through rate.
Might also spot check to see if there's any significant number of closed auctions that didn't result in a sale because of a reserve that was not met.
The 31% success rate couldn't possibly include Japan because Yahoo's Japan site still has about 2 million items without a listing fee. Therefore, it's success rate would be low like that of their US site before it put in the listing fee (less than 10%, possibly closer to 5-7%).
Reserves likely don't figure too much into this for the simple reason that there's a fee on reserves (for unsuccessful items) so they'd tend not be used for items that sellers think less likely to succeed. Also, I'm sure Yahoo wouldn't have counted an item as successful if it didn't meet reserve.
The problem with your "human" method of sampling is that there won't be a sufficiently large sample nor would it be random and it won't be proportianately distributed.
Surfing around is better just to get a rough sense that Yahoo's claim is true.
Anyway, the statistics recently claimed by Yahoo and cited in the AuctionWatch article are plausible. I give good odds that their 31% success rate is true.
John
[ edited by John10101 on Jun 3, 2001 02:34 PM ]
posted on June 3, 2001 10:16:09 PM new
The stats are a little missleading.
In most of the categories I follow or sell in the sell through is 10%-15%. There are obviously some hot categories that are pumping up the percentage. I also haven't noticed any increase in the final sale price...
[ edited by outoftheblue on Jun 3, 2001 10:17 PM ]
posted on June 4, 2001 08:19:21 AM new
"Yahoo told Reuters that in the five months since it introduced small listing fees on its U.S. auction site, the percentage of listed merchandise being sold has soared, as has overall bidding activity and average selling prices."
My sales are around 10%. I haven't heard of anyone's sales soaring!
[ edited by quickdraw29 on Jun 4, 2001 08:25 AM ]
posted on June 4, 2001 11:06:06 PM new
Before Yahoo implemented fees, I was selling about 10-13%. After they announced fees and the bidders saw that it was their last chance to buy, I sold up to 45% (in January or February). The next batch sold at 17%, and the next at 7% or 8%. That's when I basically moved to other auctions (mostly BidVille and eBay), and have listed almost nothing on Yahoo since early April. I guess I'll have to list an auction soon or my YaWho account will be closed for "inactivity"....and $500 in feedback credits will go down the drain.
posted on June 5, 2001 06:04:57 AM new
Hi, dimview. Those numbers were correct for the time period they are taking about. Here is why. I am one of the big adult video sellers on the net. I was selling 10 to 60 tapes a day on Yahoo via buy now auctions on Yahoo before they announced the closing and after the listing fee's. This was a 95% sell rate on auctions including the 2 auto relists. Whick equated to a 40% sell thru rate on first list. Now after they announced the closeing sales shot up 50%. Then died down as you could no longer list. Then all of a sudden after two weeks back doors were found to enter auctions into the "closed" section. This lasted 5 weeks. In that time i alone entered over 5000 buy now auctions onto yahoo with a 97% sell rate on the first listing. Auto relists no longer worked but were not needed with that sell thru rate. I was selling 60 to 200 video's a day. I could never get more than a 250 auctions up and running at one time becouse they were closing so fast with buy now. Now i was one of 4 large listing people listing at this time. One was double my size. The other two combined equalled half of me. The 4 of us accounted for 95% of the listings in those 5 weeks. Dutch auctions that were being run for 100 video's that sold an average of 10 video's before this were selling all 100. These were huge numbers. I would say in those 5 weeks, counting a dutch auction for 100 as 100 auction wins which I am sure Yahoo does. And they probably don't count any that don't sell. IE a 100 item auction that sold 70 was 70 wins and 0 no sale or at most counted as 1. It does not even matter anyways they were all selling almost all the quantity. All this represented over 300 auctions closing a day at 99% sell thru rate. Now if you take those numbers out you wind up with a much lower sell thru rate. These were huge numbers. Take this data out of their numbers. Look at my feedback for verifacation, eddie149 on Yahoo. You can see my feedback numbers and you get a very low % of feedbacks left in adult on Yahoo because the feedback shows the titles.
posted on June 24, 2001 01:49:19 PM new
My Yahoo sell through rate is over 90% since they started charging fees. This is because by charging fees they weeded out the junk sellers. Now buyers can find things they want without wading through tons of junk.
In one Yahoo specialty area I have damn near 100% sell through, but it's because I get good enough bidding that I can afford to start very low and not protect with reserves. In another area, I use "buy it now" pricing to protect myself and am dying. Low starts there, I've found to my horror, result in sales below my costs.
Depends on which area you sell things in on Yahoo... some are quite decent, some are horrible. My experience.
posted on June 24, 2001 06:16:17 PM new
after reading all these posts,i decide to give yahoo auction a second chance,so far i sold 3 items.two payments received and one i have not heard from yet??
for unknown reason i cannot move money from yahoo paydirect into my bank account,it worked a few days ago??
theonly difference is that yahoo has made 2 deposits and i need to verify it online.
as i dont know what they are until i call my bank tomorrow,i cant move money.
but why does it affect moving money from paydirect to bank??
i am not trying to send money from bank to paydirect??
so much frustration for so little-paypal,yahoo,billpoint.
posted on June 25, 2001 12:18:55 PM new
I am still having problem with moving money,\i called my bank and they said i have to contact yahoo.
i emailed yahoo twice,so far no response.
having less junk on yahoo does help your sale through.
