Well eBay announced today they had a solid in-line Q ($1.4b revs, .24 EPS). This was welcome news compared to Yahoo!'s earnings hit, but revenue miss. Up tomorrow we have Google.
eBay shocked many (but NOT eBay Strategies readers as we had predicted this May 30th), by also announcing pricing changes. Note this is the first time I'm aware of they've done this "off cycle" in the July timeframe versus the traditional Jan/Feb timeframe so the need to rebalance the SIF/core balance must be urgent.
There's so much change in here I haven't had enough time to digest it all yet, much less talk to customers about it. There's store listing fee increases, the FVF gets a significant bump, the 10 SKU rule is now 15 SKU rule, store listings will show in the BIN tab, half.com listings will show in core, BIN is now in EE, and more. Also, it was hinted on the conference call that these changes would be rolled out internationally. This is interesting because SIS still lives on in the UK/DE markets and others. They must be seeing the same imbalance there.
Finally, there's a .20 core insertion "back to basics" fee promo. Phew, my head is spinning.
eBay Strategies readers - what do you think about the changes? Will they help with the marketplace imbalance? Feel free to comment - I'm going to go call some customers and will report back.
penis enlargement pills
acne treatment
weight loss
VigRX pills
Posted by: mescane | October 14, 2006 at 02:54 AM
eBay has mostly eliminated the ability for Search to deliver traffic to a Seller's eBay store. It is time for the eBay Store Owner to take full responsiblity for promotion. Here are some Basic E-Commerce Store Marketing Ideas, many of them one time tasks, that can yield some good results.
Posted by: MailCar Limited | July 22, 2006 at 01:15 PM
My sales have been way off (70%) since the announcement-I believe they have already implemented the new search parameters (30 + 30). Also, no one has really digested the long range plan that Ebay is trying to implement. Get rid of all fixed price, but-it-now listings whether in the store or not. I see now that the search pages have 3 new tabs ALL ITEMS - AUCTIONS ONLY - BUY IT NOW. They currently default to ALL ITEMS. But if Ebay is really committed to their Theory - they will eventually default to AUCTIONS. That means that a buyer would have to override the system to see any FIXED PRICE items. Fixed price is the MEAT & POTATOES of Ebay. They believe that they need to get back to their CORE business - AUCTIONS. Not sure sellers will want to (but will be forced) to start their $1000+ items at .99 cents. Not sure cannabalism is the best way to improve bottom line. We are very weary of all of the changes - 4 significant operating changes in 6 mos. What business has that many changes in so short a time?
Although, this is an opportunity (because we sellers have SOOO much more time on our hands) to investigate and upload our thousands of listings to other sites. I really like the Mr Grabber that ioffer now has. Does an instant conversion of all ebay listings and brings them to that site. One click. C'mon Amazon-Yahoo et al-make it easy for us, we really want to go.
Posted by: Michele | July 22, 2006 at 07:09 AM
Watch Out Below.
The sky is falling. eBay stock at a couple of minutes before the close is down $1.25 on Very heavy volume, almost double the average daily volume of 21,000,000.
Bill
Posted by: Bill | July 20, 2006 at 01:01 PM
My sell through is probably pretty good compared to alot of ebay stores who don't seem to care a shred about the low .02 listing, final value and monthly fees. It's hard to stand out now with all the crappy stores & junk dealers on ebay so this is a great way to get rid of chaff. However, they'll lose some high quality inventory such as mine, as there are other internet venues with better rates and frankly I'm weary of trying to make my better quality stuff stand out vs. all the junk.
Posted by: Craig | July 20, 2006 at 12:51 PM
Well it looks like they could not get the spin they wanted. Wall street is looking at the reactions the management made to try to boost the stock and they know it is all BS. The stock is down right now on VERY heavy volume and is testing the 52 week low.
I predict that Meg will be announcing her retirement with in the month.
Bill
Posted by: Bill | July 20, 2006 at 09:35 AM
Sorry a bit of a brain spasm there on the new sort, it's for shop listings not general search results.
Posted by: Robert | July 20, 2006 at 08:23 AM
Of course they announced a similar change in the UK as well, eBay UK announcement. There were changes to shop insertion fees, final value fees, and other fee changes for Featured Plus and mobile phones with contracts.
And as feared a change in SIF beginning 2 August 2006 where shop listing will no longer appear in search results "only when the main site has returned only a small number of relevant items". Uh what's a small number of relevant items? Well I have to dig further into another link from the above page to search for the answer. Ouch no answer there, off to another link referenced...and of course no answer there either. I guess it's a big secret.
Oh and if you head to the other link, this page, additional info page you'll find another nice jewel. The default sort on search which as traditionally been "items ending soonest" is changing to "Lowest price first". The reason the default search isn't good for generating traffic to listing using longer durations. This means a big change in strategy for many sellers.
Posted by: Robert | July 20, 2006 at 05:21 AM
I was hoping Scot was wrong back in May but it appears not. I sell a lot of books in the .99 range that may not sell for months. These are not auction items but now with the increase in store fees it going to kill me to carry them for months. If I read it right, now half.com will be more competition for me in the stores or buy it now searches. I figured it up with my over 1000 items I have in stores and the increase in fees it is going to hit me more than the 6% Bill is claiming.
So many changes... no wonder they waited until after eBay Live. I think they would have killed him there!
Guess I'll ride it out a couple months and take another look. I like the yahoo store idea since I have my own website. It maybe bye bye to eBay.
Jim
Posted by: RadioComputerSupply | July 20, 2006 at 04:11 AM
You think eBay's numbers are bad? Look at paypal - 113 million accounts, but only 29 million accounts active in the last quarter (and that number would skew more heavily to sellers, who use paypal on a regular basis).
Posted by: dimes | July 19, 2006 at 10:56 PM
eBay has 61% inactive users, 112 Million, who haven't bid or listed in the previous 12 months. Doesn't anybody see this? I'm dumping my ebay stock today, they are going to take a beating as users leave. This will KILL the long tail of items being sold...they've cut off their tail but worrying about fees instead of customers...shame on them.
They are completely stuck in the Innovator's Dilemma.
David
Posted by: David Armstrong | July 19, 2006 at 10:23 PM
This IS the straw that broke the camels back. Time to get the web site fired up. I think it will be on Yahoo since they will probably be buying eBay in a year or so.
Talk about idiocracy, the management at eBay has no clue at all on how to stay ahead of the game. It is one word and it is called inovation, but all they seem to do is degradation. It is a shame. In the last 7 years I have seen the place just fall down into the pits. There is going to be a lot more running away than there were the last time they pulled this stunt. The 3rd quarter results are going to look pitiful. Yes they did make $0.24 a share in this quarter but that was before the stock option write offs. That leaves a net of $0.17 and wall street knows that. Then they announce a stock buy back program. Like that is going to do much. They are running and jumping trying to keep the price up on the shares. Who ever did the 10,000 Oct $25.00 puts is looking pretty good.
Bill
Posted by: Bill | July 19, 2006 at 09:55 PM
I had expected any fee increase in store listings to be accompanied by a meaningful enhancement to the SIS situation. No time yet to fully analyze - too busy getting ready to list my dogs for the 20 cent days tomorrow and Friday, an event usually accompanied by poor sales lingering for 7 to 10 days for me...
Posted by: John | July 19, 2006 at 07:53 PM
I, for one, will be closing my eBay store and looking at other online auctions. I sell in Australia where the relatively small marketplace is very competitive. My margins are very tight and these fee increases make eBay an option for only some products. The sentiment on the Aussie Power Seller boards seems to be the same.
eBay has a lot of problems with the way it operates (in terms of server errors etc) and in the way it (doesn't) enforce its own rules. I've been feeling more and more negative about it lately and this is pretty much the straw that breaks the camels back.
I'm definitely cancelling my store subscription and also scaling back my listings. Time to focus on my three websites more too.
RedcliffeTech
Posted by: RedcliffeTech | July 19, 2006 at 07:53 PM
Stores with paypal are now the same price as Amazon ~15% for items $25 and under just seems insane for ebay stores.
Clearly they hate catalog dropshipping sellers, and they want to make sure and get a bunch of your cash while you set up you off ebay site.
Getting rid of 2 cent store listings also paves the way for increased ammounts of PPC advertising with Yahoo now as well.
Posted by: Garth | July 19, 2006 at 07:24 PM