posted on August 9, 2002 09:14:19 PM new
Y!Auctions used to have a few million items listed. After Yahoo
implemented the first fee structure (no final value fee, but pretty
high listing fee), the number of auctions dropped like a rock (10x).
Today, there are only about 300 thousand listings there. Yahoo tried
to change the fee structure again to reduce the listing fee, but it
hardly made any difference in the number of listings. Yahoo tried to
conduct a few free listing days and every time the number of listings
failed to keep the gain.
By today, Y!Auctions has lost so much ground to Ebay that nobody
thinks the playing field can be leveled.
But I think before completely giving up on Y!Auctions, Yahoo should
try something that is extremely likely to attract a lot of sellers,
but something that has never been implemented by anybody, although
the change from system development perspective is very simple.
It is extremely important to remember that the business model I am
suggesting below is proven by Ebay's Half.com, Amazon Marketplace,
and Y!Warehouse. People have accepted it as witnessed by ever
increasing popularity of these channels even though they are so much
more expensive than auctions (final value fee 10-15% versus 2-5%).
Let me explain. There are 2 main problems/complains/risks inherent in
both Ebay and Yahoo auctions:
1) buyer does not pay
2) seller does not ship
What if Y!Auctions completely eliminates the first type of risk? What
if Y!Auctions simply follows more traditional way of selling in which
buyer's credit card is charged to complete the transaction. If
sellers knew that bids cannot be reversed and payment will be made
automatically as soon as the auction ends, a lot of sellers would be
willing to give Yahoo another try. I am 100% sure this will attract a
lot of sellers. This will put Y!Auctions in a new light when it's
considered the most seller friendly auction website.
Y!Auctions should charge auction winner's credit card as soon as the
auction ends. Before submitting a bid, a bidder must agree to this.
If he does not agree, it means he does not have serious intention and
should not be allowed bidding. Every bid should be backed up by a
valid credit card. This is similar model to Y!Warehouse and Y!
Shopping, which charge buyers as soon as a purchase is made.
Since Yahoo charges bidder's credit card on seller's behalf (without
giving credit card information to the seller), as soon as the auction
ends, the cost of credit card transaction should be passed to the
seller. Even better, Y!Auctions could allow sellers choosing if they
want to make an auction listing instant pay or traditional listing. I
bet every seller would choose instant pay type, because it removes
non-paying bidder risk. Yahoo could even charge sellers 50c for every
instant pay auction.
This single change will make Y!Auctions very popular with sellers.
It's true that if every bidder is required to have a valid credit
card, some potential bidders with no credit card will not be able to
bid. But somehow, Half.com, Amazon, and Y!Wareshouse can live with
this. Everybody who shops online has a credit card. Every sale online
first requires a valid credit card, which is charged before the goods
are delivered. Why auctions should be different?
Please somebody at Yahoo, make sure this concept is discussed. Y!
Auctions is at a point when it's increasingly becoming irrelevant.
Take this 'risk' - which I don't really call risk because the instant
pay model has been proven by the success of Half.com and Amazon
Marketplace.
Also, Y!Auctions, please do the same what Y!Warehouse did recently:
give positive feedback to the seller if the buyer did not leave any
feedback within 30 days after the auction ended. No feedback means
the buyer does not have complains and the transaction went
successfully.
http://help.yahoo.com/help/us/shop/used/buy/buy-03.html
posted on August 9, 2002 10:56:50 PM new
[i]It's true that if every bidder is required to have a valid credit
card, some potential bidders with no credit card will not be able to
bid. [/i]
For over a year all Yahoo users, both sellers and bidders, have had to have a valid credit card and the 4 digit number on the back of the card.
I'm sure the sellers would go for your proposal, though something like an 8% FVF instead of Half's 10% would help. The problem would be the buyers. Many would balk at the credit card purchase on items they haven't seen yet. If Yahoo set it up exactly like Yahoo Used Goods it wouldn't make any sense to have both. I'd like to see the Yahoo Auctions shut down completely and Yahoo heavily promote the Used Goods instead, and change that stupid name to Yahoo Warehouse again. There are a lot of brand new items on Yahoo Used Goods.
ebay knows that the Half model is the only way to go and so should Yahoo. Auctions are dead and the buyers are getting very bad at paying.
posted on August 9, 2002 11:11:49 PM new
The problem I see with that is not attracking sellers, but driving bidders away. I personally would not want anything charged to any credit card of mine what so ever. And if that were the only way I could use Yahoo, I would leave in a heartbeat.
You also talk about the amount of listings. It is true Yahoo had millions of listings before listing fees. Only problem was 90% of those listings were commons sports cards, recipes and auctions for bogus services or events. What the listing fees did was purge most of those auctions out leaving much higher quality auctions for bidders to bid upon. What happened then was the crap sellers left, the majority of the deadbeats went with them along with many good sellers. But the bidders stayed. Over the next few months, the good sellers found sites like bidville and realized that is where the crap auctions and deadbeats ended up. So many went back even before the revised listing fee structure only to find that the quality bidders were still there and ended up selling just as well as before. Is it or will it be as big as Ebay. I doubt it, but it is a very good back up site.
posted on August 10, 2002 06:19:28 AM new
Paydirect offers absolutely no seller protection. Accepting that form of payment is like gunning the engine when the red lights flash at a RR crossing. I learned that $45 lesson a year ago and after consideration it could have been much worse.
dd
posted on August 10, 2002 08:48:58 AM new
</>Many would balk at the credit card purchase on items they haven't seen yet</>
But same thing happens at Half.com and Y!Warehouse. Bidders never see the product and simply trust sellers to be honest.
Why auctions should be diffrent? Buyers still have a way to contact sellers to ask questions, etc before placing the first bid.
If I place a bid and this bid wins the auction, it means that one way or another, I am obliged to pay. Instand pay removes any risk for seller.
posted on August 10, 2002 01:33:59 PM new
I like yahoo's current auction system the way it is. For a nickel I can list an item for $9.95 or less while ebay wants that for BIN alone. It is easier to list on yahoo, you can have 10 day listings for FREE, you have protection from negative feedback users, yahoo will delete feedback left by deadbeats, and you can set the time of day your auction ends.
When yahoo began fees the listings dropped 90% like caffeitalia said, but also those items were junk listings, and never stood a chance of selling. Now yahoo is left with 275,000 quality items, and the selection changes weekly. Bidville who picked up all the low-demand items has a very low sale rate of 1.5% or less. For over a year the nickel and dime cards have increased while the books have remained stationary, and the other items have seen a decline. Bidville should become a sportcard only site.
Should yahoo go to a flat FVF? NO, because if they do the sellers who flocked to bidville would return in mass and destroy the site with inflated prices. Sellers have a choice of using the #1 site being ebay, or the #2 site being yahoo.
posted on August 10, 2002 05:10:23 PM new
If Yahoo could set up a seperate Half.com and make it EXACTLY like Half ( or even slightly lower comission ) then that would be a good alternative to Half. Other than Amazon, no one has a similar setup to Half. Yet Half is very sucessful.
posted on August 11, 2002 08:27:11 AM new
All "management" and staff of Yahoo auctions should carefully tie large rocks around their ankles, and collectively jump off a high cliff into a deep lake. They are a bunch of useless t1ts
PS ... I..AM CANADIAN, and it wasn't until after I gave them all my personal info that, as a Canadian, I found out I cannot sell there. The Yahoo idiots don't have the brains to include this info on their registration pages, nor the courtesy to tell us why our listings never show up.
posted on August 11, 2002 10:15:17 AM newdemid, I find your idea interesting! Personally I would favor an auction system where Yahoo! would collect the money and forward it on to the sellers, with the correct protections built in for both sellers and buyers.
As a seller, I know that both Half.com and Amazon.com took steps to verify our legitimacy, once our sales were reaching a certain point on those venues. Yahoo! could take the same course on its auctions, and it would make the site very unappealing to the high-ticket item scammers that are presently having a heyday at both eBay and Yahoo!
robertsmithson, Yahoo! already has a half.com model in place in the form of Yahoo! Used Goods, although it is more difficult to navigate and more difficult for the buyer to find. The name "used goods" is misleading(and a bad choice in NTBHO), as there are lots of BRAND NEW items listed there. Its old name "Warehouse" wasn't the best, as it implied "buying in volume" to the buyer, but Y! management's decision to change to "used goods" was an even worse choice.
RB, I generally agree with your assessment of Y! management...when the layoffs were made at Y! earlier this year...they would have been far better served to have started from the top down, rather than from the bottom up. As far as receiving replies to problems at the Yahoo! site, we all know that Yahoobots have no real brains or a conscience, so courtesy isn't in their make-up. Apparently Yahoo!'s top executives share the same deficits as the Yahoobots. They seem completely out of touch on what's happening to the Y! auction site or its useless(to a serious seller or buyer) message boards.
posted on August 11, 2002 11:37:09 AM new
The Canadians are banned from selling on Yahoo-USA but there is a Yahoo-Canada so there is at least somewhere where they can sell at Yahoo. If all Canadians were booted from the US site the rationale might have been that the Yahoo-Canada site might get some new life?
posted on August 11, 2002 11:49:22 AM new
I like Yahoo just the way it is. I get less deadbeats than on eBay. I would not like my credit card billed with every item I buy either. I like to use funds I have in PayPal or take the money out of my pocket and buy a money order.
I don't think it was a problem for Yahoo going from over 2 million items down to 300,000 That is like saying I have 100 customers that never spend any money with me and trading them in for 30 that do spend money with me.
posted on August 11, 2002 05:23:43 PM newIf all Canadians were booted from the US site the rationale might have been that the Yahoo-Canada site might get some new life?
Sounds like something their idiot idea people would come up with. I have also removed Yahoo home pages from my list of favourite websites - got tired of seeing all the links to the bootleg listings on their (thankfully) dying auction venue.
