posted on August 30, 2000 06:17:17 PM new
I had 1800 ads, no spam, all unique items, selling 200 items per month. My feedback rating = +1050. With the new rules, since ad duration is 10 days or 1/3 of a month, with relists, my ad count was 5400 per month. Yahoo with their new rules have 'awarded" me 1600 ads for the month. So they have effectively cut my # of ads, and my sales, and my income by 2/3.
Somebody please tell me who benefits from this change????
posted on August 30, 2000 11:25:44 PM new
No idea? Well, I'll throw one out: What if Pierre and Meg over at ePay were making fairly large payoffs to the decision makers at Yahoobot Auctions to sabatoge the site, so as to keep Yahoobot from destroying ePay's leading position in the CyberGarage sale wars?
Their motive is to keep ePay's stock price as high as possible while they continue to unload their shares as fast as the law allows.
That's the best I can do. No other explaination makes any sense, but I want to hear them, so please put in your 2 cents worth.
posted on August 31, 2000 02:36:32 AM new
farfetched idea...
I can say that I don't know who the change does directly benefit though. It will keep merchandise on Yahoo from getting "stale" but it seems to me that it might also keep the site from growing exponentially. I don't believe that it will have much effect on spam, as any seller can still submit 1000 of the same item & sell till enough people NW the auctions.
At the same time the change will effectively limit sellers like zz, which is unfortunate.
I haven't made sense of this whole thing in my own mind so I can't cohesively answer the question, but I'm sure others will add their input.
posted on August 31, 2000 07:24:35 AM new
I think that after yahoo auctions was put up, they fired everyone but one of the founders' brother-in-law (it was the only job he could get). Since he is too lazy to actually look at the auctions once in a while and get rid of spammers and deadbeats and crooks, he's trying to come up with some automated way to do this and this limit is the best he could come up with. Look at all the other "great" features Y! has:
NW - someone wants to get rid of you, they just NW your auctions under 3 different IDs and you're gone.
Minimum bidder rating - set this to 1 and negative rated bidders will be forced to enter a number (it doesnt have to be their number, just any number). Good bidders however, dont think so deviously and might not want to enter their CC, so they wont bid. This feature really helps sellers.
Blacklist - your poor deadbeats will actually have to take another minute and create another phony ID
What about real solutions, like email verification (available on EVERY other auction site)? Real CC verification? A human being from Y! checking out the auctions from time to time?
I could go on but I think I've reached my complaint limit and I haven't found a way to automate my complaints yet. Maybe I should email Y! for some advice. Oh yeah, I'll just get a canned response on a different topic.
posted on August 31, 2000 08:41:00 AM new
zzyzx000
I think part of the problem is in catagories, where there are not enough sub-categories!
Folks automatically relist the two times and if items do not sell they just manage it again and relist it two more times!
Yahoo has been pretty much running like an on going classified ad and does not get much competitive bidding activity in some categories!!
Unfortunately that causes those of us who get $10 to $20 an item on the E-greed site to list higher start prices on Yahoo normally being a SELL-FOR-WHAT-YOU-LIST-IT-FOR-SITE!
RARE COMPETITIVE BIDDING!
If my old timers disease recalls right a few years ago YAHOO had up to FIVE automatic relists at up to FOURTEEN DAYS each!
Was nice, since you could go on summer vacation for a few months and business went on as usual! You did not even have to do anything! Come home and contact any bidders and say "Sorry, I was on vacation and fell a little bit behind and I am catching up now!"
I very seldom used YAHOO at the time, since in toys-diecast-matchbox all that was listing there were toy stores and businesses that used the above with newer items that you could go and buy at WAL MART or the big "K"!
Still lot of it there and they are all unique items! Ask a matchbox car collector!
Things have progressively gotten better!
The only real suggestions I can make at present are not to automatically resubmit so you do not get charged 3 for 1 or lower start prices so the items the items sell and earn the extra relists each month!
Set up batches as AM Pro or other venues have and resubmit all the items that do not sell! That way you do not loose the two credits for the AUTO RELIST feature!
My customers all agreee with you when they thank me for letting them buy something immediately. My sales were way up using the classified ad approach. Why does everything have to be an auction, anyways?
But that is all immaterial to this thread. Let's stick to the question of figuring out who this cap on the # of auctions benefits or what problems it prevents.
I didn't know people were spamming in the thousands. With a cap of 2900 auctions anyways, what good does it do to cut it down to 333 (100 auctions divided by 2 relists per month)???
Most of the nonsense I've seen here has to do with less than 333 auctions. There is PLENTY of havoc to be committed within the new framework. I'm still looking for 1 example of a benefit these rules have for ANYBODY???
posted on August 31, 2000 09:39:08 AM new
You said it all: This is where the action is and it's perfectly acceptable to structure your "auction" to really be a classified ad.
But please: This is an interesting subject but this thread is not about that subject. This is about WHY did the Yahoobots change the maximum # of auctions and Who if anybody does it benefit?
posted on August 31, 2000 09:50:45 AM new
Easy answer! Customers who do not want to look at the same 200 out of 300 items they just looked at that did not sell!
That is from me being a buyer on Yahoo and not a seller!
Browse the photos only in toys-diecast-matchbox or hotwheels and you will see what I am saying!
Do not believe I have purchased on yahoo in months, but have on other sites!
posted on August 31, 2000 10:09:05 AM new
I don't think so. How many "stale' items are posted by sellers with over 1000 items?
Me and a handful of others. They wouldn't write all this code just to deal with me. In fact, I've yet to see anybody else besides myself who had over 1000 auctions. I know there must be some, but I stumble around enough on the system to know legitimate sellers with 1000 or more items are as rare as hen's teeth.
posted on August 31, 2000 10:13:01 AM new
>>rare as hen's teeth. <<
Hen's teeth aren't rare. There a guy with a thousand auctions for them on Yahoo. Yahoo bidders with only one ID, a reply from Y! customer service that isnt canned, a bad bidder or seller actually getting kicked off the site - now that's rare.
posted on August 31, 2000 10:38:41 AM new
Warr, you're analysis of me is all wrong. thanks for your biography, but since i started this thread, let me say for the 3rd time: Please let's not branch off this question here:
Why did the yahoobots do this and who does it benefit?
posted on August 31, 2000 11:41:49 AM new
Start a new thread on this topic and I'll enlighten you. I think it's interesting but I want to keep this thread about the original question.
posted on August 31, 2000 01:19:29 PM new
I was also interested in this question and made a post at TSZ in hopes that others had insight or Y would post some explaination.
It seems to limit listings, penalize using resubmit, give credit for sales and for positive feedback. At the same time it also seems to have a number of unanswered question, creates problems for some successful users and doesn't speak to a number of issues of potential abuse.
Maybe it is part of a several stage plan to bring about positive change. I choose to believe that at this time.
Since it is based on the 1st of the month I am also interested to see what happens in the later part of future months when people run out of ability make new listings.
For now I'm just believing that Y is trying to "Make things better" and will correct problems and provide help where it is unfair.
That others may know or believe differently is understandable.
posted on August 31, 2000 02:11:06 PM new
"This "stale item" angle just isn't it. What else?"
Actually I think that is it. Bear with my long explanation, because the only theory I can come up with is that the change was to benefit buyers.
The main sub-category I shop has 8700-9000 listings per day. That's 174-180 pages to browse. If you're a seller would you want to run a 10 day ad and be on page 180? Of course not, we understand no bidder is going to browse that far. To keep their items ahead in the pages many sellers run 2 day ads and constantly relist their same ads every 2 days. (Ads which would never sell anyway because most are way overpriced.) Most of these sellers have 300 or more ads in that same sub-category. To the bidder it does appear that they are seeing the same stale items over & over because they ARE. I only have the patience to browse about 20 pages in a day and I certainly see the same stuff daily with only a few intermingled ads that are winding down from 3, 4, 5 etc day runs. The 1000 max was meant to force those sellers that relisted the same 300+ ads every 2 days to either run less or run those 300 10 days with 2 resubs. Either way it gives the browsers much more variety & keeps them interested (as opposed to going off to eBay in desperate search of different ads).
The prior change of the jumbled end times on search pages I think went hand in hand with this to help those running longer ads get more exposure in the early pages.
Of course I don't know that this was Yahoo's thinking, but it's all I can come up with.
posted on August 31, 2000 02:40:48 PM new
kasmoon: What subcategory is this?
I know in books, a person browsing has no chance because the categories are so incomplete, most books get dumped in Other, and that's a lot of books. So books is all the yahoobots fault.
And browsing may be fun especicsally with pix only, but I would guess most of the stuff sold here on Yahoo and ePay is found with the search engine. And in that case the stale items shouldn't matter much.
About "stale" items: Remember one man's trash is another man's treasure. It's very selfish to say some widget should not be on the block for a year but that's because you don't want it anyways. The bueaty of Yahoo and their free auctions is that obscure items can find their rightful owner in time. I have so many of these items where I thought, "I guess it's never going to sell," and i would certainly not have paid a listing fee, but hey, it's already there, why take it down. And eventually it does sell.
For example look at this one:
http://page.auctions.yahoo.com/auction/37485131
I would never have dreamed to list this but i was right. After one year a golf collector bought it. It made him happy. So who are you to say you're tired of my stale warez?
If the Yahoobots were smart, which they are not, they would realize this whole auction thing is just a fad anyways. 95% of the stuff sold on Yahoo and ePay has a value that is well known or deduced. Now that I use the BUY price and 1st Bid wins for my listings, I have had many more compliments for doing that than Y! has had complaints for auctions being stale.
If the true auction types want the auctions seperated from the classified ads, all the Yahoobots need do is tie the classified ads into the auctions so that the same search engine will find both and put links to both areas on the same main page.
It would seem to me that SALES would be the goal of the site and not to worry about what type of sale was successful. On ePay I'll bet a billion that will happen over time. On Y!, however, since it's free, sales are not the bottom line. Advertising sales are. Yet it would seem to me that the # of auctions would be directly proportional to the # of hits and thus the # of $ in advertising revenue.
Then again, I don't see much advertising on Y! auctions...just occasionally on the home page. Perhaps they don't want the site to grow anymore, In fact it looks like it will shrink, and I'm referring to real auctions, not spam.
Whatever the reason, it's clear it was another ill-conceived attempt at automating their problems away, and is definately another harmful action to the legitimate seller.
posted on August 31, 2000 03:01:21 PM new
Another thing about pricing. For every item that get's bid up to the Stratospere at auction, there are 100 where the buyer got the steal of the century. I'm talking about ePay here. Many sellers are newbies and they start the bidding at $9.99 or less to save listing fees, and they trust that the market will establish a fair price.
That almost is never the case and it goes triple on Y!. There are just not enough buyers yet to have a good auction. You are better off to do some research, find what the reasonable price is, list it for that price and wait. I know this depends on what you are selling but it's a true general rule.
And in setting minimum prices, you need to remember that a seller has to take a pix, write the ad, maintain the ad, deal with the seller with emails, handle the payment, wrap the item and ship the item. That some people sell things for under $5.00 shows me they don't have a life...they value their own time below minimum wage.
I think it would be true to say ePay is a "Buyer's" site. Fees are structured to encourage sellers to dump their wares and get what they can for it. In the past Yahoo had not had those restrictions, but with this new change, it seem to leaning that way.
As a seller, don't succomb. You must set a reasonable price and be patient.
One proof is in the used Video tapes, Music Cd's and books I sell. If the item is still in print Amazon will sell it at their reduced prices. In my ads I even tell them what Amazon's price is and list mine 1st Bid WINS at 1/2 Amazon's price. Now if you think that's a good deal (these items have no defects), wouldn't you think they would sell almost immediately? In that case why not have an auction and maybe I'll get even more?
Well the truth is they sell very slowly. I mean, Y! is not Wal-mart you know. The whole world is not tuned in there. But if you list a lot of itmes and be patient, you will be busy every day shipping sales.
That is before the changes. They have just about put me out of business. With the limit of 300 auctions a month and no bulk loader until all my current auctions expire (a bug in the new software), I think I'll go on vacation and curse the day I met Tom Churchill.
posted on August 31, 2000 03:48:07 PM new
The suggestion elsewhere that Y might offer additional listings each month (above 1000), at some fee, is an interesting speculation.
[ edited by reston_ray on Aug 31, 2000 05:14 PM ]
posted on August 31, 2000 04:17:36 PM new
kasmoon
I agree with you whole heartedly!
I search and bid by browsing! None of the search engines find everything! Especially if the seller does not use the key wordS!
You can bet Yahoo or any service is not going to sit by and watch people use there services with the same data over and over as you stated!
Yahoo also has store front space on the net already! That is where they really want the fixed price classified sellers to go!
It will cost you!
Just as Amazon did!
zzyzx000
Did you go browse matchbox! Usually 70 plus pages continually reloaded with relists by the same sellers probablly in the same manner as mentioned by kasmoon!
Not much sells and new inventory is pricy if you sell low!
Same as you mentioned in the books categories!
Your merchandise appears to be somewhat diversified and that makes a large difference then when you specialize in certain items!
Also some search engines already search classifieds on line!
posted on August 31, 2000 05:55:22 PM new
All the suggestions are real nice, but if they worked, ePay would be a memory. There just a few places people look and one of them is not with an AuctionWatch universal search engine. Perhaps you should try these things and see what happens to your income?
The fact is most people don't even know what COPY and PASTE means. Not a day goes by that somebody emails me and says, "Where is my Widget? I sent you Paypal 2 weeks ago." Then I check my Paypal history and find, no they did not. Then they email me a notice that they sent the money almost to me but they made a typo and so it went somewhere in Cyberspace. Then I have to teach them COPY, PASTE and the CLIPBOARD.
Hey, we're a long way from things being as they should. But I expect more from professionals which the Yahoobots are not.
At the moment there are 178 pages, 8,822 ads. Most of the sellers are stamp dealers who naturally have several hundred in stock and list them as singles. The new closed auction by sub-category search shows only an average of 25-35 sales per day out of well over 8000 ads. This is why I think shoppers tire of browsing this category and go to eBay instead. As I said before the same sellers repeat the same items with 2 day ads relisted every 2 days. Browsers can't simply start at page 30 to bypass them or they would miss out on the few longer running ads that have reached the 1-2 days left stage.
When I have something specific in mind I do enter it in the Search this category box but Y's search engine doesn't pick up all the proper ads. I prefer to browse because I often see things I wouldn't have thought of otherwise.
"it would seem to me that the # of auctions would be directly proportional to the # of hits and thus the # of $ in advertising revenue."
I for one would be hitting alot more ads if I didn't recognize them as 90% of the same stuff every 2 days. I only have so much time to browse & it takes awhile to ferret out the ads I've already bypassed time and again. I do expect that to change 9-1 because those sellers are forced to use longer run or less ads.
"Whatever the reason, it's clear it was another ill-conceived attempt at automating their problems away, and is definately another harmful action to the legitimate seller."
As a seller, of course I agree.
I really can't speak for other categories because I rarely shop outside this one. You asked for a guess as to why Yahoo would limit each sellers ads & this is all I could think of. I am simply speculating in all my theories.
The sub-category is called U.S. FDCs but since it's the ONLY fdc category every cover from every country is in there. A much better idea would have been to give it branches by country to pare it down. Browsers would not have nearly as much to page through & sellers wouldn't need 2 day ads to keep their items on early pages. Again, only speaking for this category THAT would have worked much better for both buyers AND sellers than the ad limit.
[ edited by kasmoon on Aug 31, 2000 10:10 PM ]
posted on September 1, 2000 03:38:58 AM new
This was DEFINITELY done to eliminate BUYER complaints of duplicated auctions, the same items relisted over and over again, and high opening prices. I THINK Yahoo's intentions with the 1000 listing limit are:
1) To discourage sellers from running 2-3 day auctions that stay at the top of the pages THAT DON'T SELL, relisting over and over, without price drops or changes.
2) To discourage sellers who run longer auctions THAT DON'T SELL from automatically relisting over and over, without price drops or changes.
3) To discourage sellers from using the "auto resubmit two times" so they will THINK about the listing when they resubmit it, making improvements or changes or price drops to try to get the item to sell.
4) To discourage spammers (of which there are PLENTY on Yahoo) from spamming duplicate listings.
5) To discourage the listing of NEW, FULL-PRICED goods which are plentiful and take longer to sell, and encourage the listing of UNIQUE ANTIQUES and COLLECTIBLES and deeply discounted new goods, which are more likely to bring multiple bids and sell on the first listing.
As much as eBay is EMBARRASSED at being called a "flea market" or "garage sale", and is trying its darndest to SHED THAT IMAGE, the "flea market" merchandise and prices are WHAT MADE EBAY WHAT IT IS. Yahoo Auction needs more "old" and "one-of-a-kind", and less NEW, mass-produced goods at retail price.
zzyzx000, I would suggest you get a few more user IDs (close in letters to the one you have now), list SIMILAR goods under each one(software under one, books under another, etc.), and put a link to your high feedback in each listing under the other IDs. Another seller (VeryModern, I think) did this a couple months ago so bidders wouldn't have to scroll through a dozen pages of dissimilar items looking for other potential purchases. It involves signing in and out to view the listings under each ID, but it will give you the listing limits you need for your merchandise. (The bulk loader may be another matter, since I think you have to "qualify" to use it?)
Maybe I'm wrong, and Yahoo's intention is just to charge sellers for all listings above their limit.
posted on September 1, 2000 04:32:12 AM new
granee -
I am a serious bidder on several sites and unfortunately, the BUYERS are always complaining about something.
The latest whines on the ebay thread about shipping charges are a perfect example.
There are certainly some enormous spam problems on Yahoo, but NW was supposed to fix that. Didn't seem to be a big sucess.
As a buyer, I wish that alot of my compatriots would just shut up and not kill a good thing. Unfortunately, on the buyers side of the issues alot of the arguments seem to be driven by hard cases and the "vocal minority" who are opposed to sellers on general principles. I wouldn't be
too surprised if alot of deadbeats didn't push most of these "buyers initiatives"
I know it can't be us serious bidders. We don't want to beat up you sellers, we just want more of your goodies!
posted on September 1, 2000 08:51:16 AM new
Regarding Legitimate posters of over 1000 items. I don't post that many, but my 39 year old son, who only does Yahoo as an avocation does 1000 a week, and he definitely doesn't own a store, or any such; he just deals in a product that is actually fairly available (if one knows where to look) and which doesn't require pictures, or excessive explanation.
I on the other hand do about 200 plus, because my pieces are more unique than his, and do require good pictures, longer explanations, etc.
One of the problems I see in this 1000 program as I have had my "allowed number of auctions, like last night flip from 1300 to 984" with in a few minutes, and that makes no sense at all.
ALSO on the stale issue - I was doing a search to try to find a category for an item I had never posted before and ran into Ads from one seller which were placed in almost every category on Yahoo! This person had about 75 ads or more for the same item, in every possible category, this is the type of seller that is causing problems. I see no relationship between a cross necklace and books - or such.
The limit is not going to stop this type of seller, he will just acquire multiple ID's and keep spamming the auction with his stuff.
posted on September 1, 2000 04:17:05 PM new
Kasmoon, you raise a very interesting point. I completely understand what you're saying, and I don't disagree with you, but I think that if that were really the method to the madness, it is only a partial solution. Yahoo could have come up with a solution such as making more DIVERSIFIED CATEGORIES. Sellers have been begging for that anyway for at least as long as I've been reading this board...probably longer... The "books- other" example is an excellent one. I can't tell you how many unsold books I have right now that might be sold by now had there been a more specific category that they fit into.
posted on September 1, 2000 08:13:55 PM new
This afternoon I browsed through 49 pages of matchbox cars to get to my auctions closing tomorrow! On page 48, I had auctions of mine closing in nine days showing prior to the ones ending tomorrow!
On the way to mine I passed several auctions that have been listed for the past year now with exuberent prices! One was repeated twice with the same photo and price!
I am sure they are all set to automatically resubmit again!
I am sure if kept there until the demand reaches the price that the item will sell!
Might be ten years from now if Yahoo allows multiple IDs for these type sellers!
Have one Id for each month with 1000 limit and you are set!
FREE IS NICE, BUT LETS GET REAL! Part of the reason I keep goin back to E-Greed and looking for other venues!!
Lot great features were on Yahoo before E-greed even thought about them except for the SPAM!
If folks have to pay they will not see it here either!
posted on September 2, 2000 02:12:29 AM new
I can tell you for a fact that "Neighborhood Watching" a spammer or terms violator WILL do some good, and it DOESN'T take three people reporting a listing to get it shut down. I'm almost always the ONLY NW "action" posted on the "violating" listings I report, and Yahoo customer care takes a look at them.
I don't know if Yahoo emails a warning asking for violating auctions to be shut down VOLUNTARILY, or if Yahoo just closes the auctions themselves, BUT IT DOES HAPPEN, and they ARE shut down eventually.
It takes a lot of time and effort to NW offenders, but if EVERYONE would NW the "spam" or "terms violation" listings WHEN THEY COME ACROSS THEM, much of the problem would be solved without limiting sellers' listing numbers.
I opened my emailbox a few days ago to find 345 messages ready to download. I groaned, thinking my screwy mailbox was giving me old email that had been held on my server this month. Much to my amazement, ALMOST ALL of it was new email from Yahoo customer care, telling me XXXXXXXX auction I had Neighborhood Watched had either been closed by the seller or deleted by Yahoo, and thanking me for making Yahoo Auction a better place.
But I can't report all the violators myself---there are just too many for even a dozen people to report. That's why it's important for EVERYONE to NW violations when they see them.
