Comments on: Is it all over for eBay? – Auction site traffic drops massively

By: Roman Mcredmond

Roman Mcredmond — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 11:09:26 +0000

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By: Cheryl

Cheryl — Sat, 17 Sep 2011 14:15:46 +0000

My last auctions are finishing tomorrow, and after that I will close my Ebay account. Once I’ve been paid for my auctions I will close my Paypal account and that will be the end of that. I can’t believe how few visitors I’ve had to my listings – this is unprecedented. Some of my listings are auctions, others are BIN. Just under half of my listings have sold for the starting price of .99p. I understand that we are in a recession and this would impact how much I can sell, but my prices are very competitive to other online retailers. This winter I will build a website and list all of my stuff for sale MY way, selling for however much I want with no fees and NO PAYPAL! Ebay used to be excellent, when it was on planet Earth.

By: Rich

Rich — Sun, 21 Aug 2011 11:48:38 +0000

If things were bad when this blog was started then I would say eBay has hit rock bottom as of Aug, 2011. I have been selling on eBay for over 12 years and I have been saying for the past 5 things are bad, now its over for eBay. There is just no traffic. I am lucky to get hits on my auctions let alone bids.

I just don’t understand why the management has done what they have done. The one thing eBay’s management can’t control is the merchandise selection and price. Because of that fact, when sellers flee eBay , it is no more. Its that simple.. That is what is happening.

All it would take is for Dateline or 60 mins. to do a story about the shill bidding & sniping that is ramp bid on the site and that would put a nail in the casket. Very sad because it was one time so great.

By: jake777

jake777 — Wed, 02 Mar 2011 13:25:53 +0000

I have sold on eBay since 1997. Like others who have posted here, I use to make a FORTUNE on eBay. At one point around 2000-2003 I was making a good $5000 a month profit selling on eBay. My items were flying off the site as fast as I could list them. At that time I knew this was too good to last because it was just too easy to make money this way and sure enough by 2004 eBay started changing things that have ruined their site.

eBay use to be just a VENUE where SELLERS could set their own terms. This is the root of the problem. eBay ONLY needs to provide a Neutral venue and stay out of the why sellers run their business. Some people have commented here that eBay had on customer service… Well the buyers need to contact the SELLER for customer service, not eBay. Don’t ask eBay to help you out when you have a problem with a SELLER. eBay WAS just a venue. Today, they are trying to act like a governing body telling everyone what to do and of course, when GOVERNMENT get’s involved you have ruined the free market that existed with rules and regulations and FEES.

Today, eBay actually LIMITS the number of items you can list on eBay at one time to 10 items!!! Can you believe that Bull_hit!!

I stopped selling about 5 months ago.

Please SOMEONE OPEN A NEW eBay site like the OLD eBay. Just provide a VENUE and STAY OUT of the selling process!!

By: E-BAY FOR DOOMSTERS

E-BAY FOR DOOMSTERS — Tue, 22 Jun 2010 02:51:04 +0000

Selling on E-bay for over ten years, and ending my relationship of these Doomsters. If the post office charges that really killed E-bay was not bad enough, the paypal and listing, final value fees. Now the most contemptable thing for sellers is this CHARGEBACK if you do not purchase shipping lables by paypal for one charge and some hallucinating “do nothing” of a tracking number for another 80 cents. If person “says” they did not recieve product, they will chargeback not only the product charges but also the shipping and insurance charges, no proof of when item was sent by post office is no longer proof. Then, witnessing on u-tube where others that have purchased the shipping lables and tracking numbers, if buyer merely states, that item was not described acurately, they move to chargeback the entire sum with no return of the item mentioned.
I now sell on other sites, the first thing I say is absolutely NO PAYPAL. SEND ME A CHECK OR MONEY ORDER. AS WAY BACK WHEN, WHEN WE SOLD, BEFORE PAYPAL FIASCO, OF SEVERE CHARGES. THERE WAS A LONG TIME WHERE PAYPAL WAS FREE. THEN, E-BAY TOOK OVER AND MADE THIS A HORRIBLE ADVENTURE IN COMMERCE.
I NOW SELL LESS AND MAKE WHOLE BUNCH MORE MONEY NOT A BIT OF IT GOES TO E-BAY OR PAYPAL.
AND, TO THE POST OFFICE? THOSE FLAT RATE OVERPRICED PACKAGES, ANYONE WITH A BRAIN, KNOWS NOT TO BUY THOSE OVER PRICED SMALL DINKY BOXES NOTHING FITS INTO. I DO A LOT WITH FED EX, THEY ARE CHAMPIONS WHEN IT COMES TO INSURING ITEMS AND PAY WITHIN 3 DAYS. TOOK ONE TIME 6 MONTHS TO GET A INSURANCE CLAIM FROM CANADA, AND, THEN THEY WANTED PICTURES, AND SUBMIT SOME CLAIM FOR REPAIRS AND MORE CRAP, THAT I DECIDED NOT TO SEND ANY BREAKABLES TO FOREIGN BUYERS. I still remember the day I sent package to Austria, and, it went to Australia, back to states and on to Austria, took 4 dang months. Do they hire folks that cannot read? perhaps.
They did refund my Chargeback, some accounts I have read and listened to on u-tube, they lost 1,000′s of dollars. People kept the product for free.

E-bay and Paypal can go stuff themselves.

By: Doomsday

Doomsday — Tue, 11 May 2010 20:37:18 +0000

I also left ebay after being a very good seller…hundreds of positive feedbacks and such. Haven’t used them in close to a year. Enough of high fees and buyer problems. Money I was making after all the fees made me laugh and grin all the time. There are other places to sell. most classifieds are free people, then there are plenty of other auction sites now too. I’ve been loving it for the past year without ebay and have sold hundreds of things locally and through other means.

By: Judy Ratajczak

Judy Ratajczak — Sat, 10 Apr 2010 05:21:50 +0000

I think that E-Bay should listen to their sellers and talk to them and find out what their concerns are and then go back to square one and make some changes that would benefit both of them. Because without sellers there wouldn’t be any E-Bay business period. If E-Bay would put a little time and effort into it, maybe they could work out a compromise where both parties would be satisfyied.

By: Charlie

Charlie — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 18:15:33 +0000

In response to Kelly,

I wonder if the main fault in falling profits is the fact that the consumer can find the same item for sale in 1000 places for different prices and it’s pretty easy to find the cheapest price and buy from someone who has little idea of business overhead and therefore sells a $1, 000 item for a $50.00 profit and will go out of business as they always do. Overhead is a main killer of business and very few people who start a business actually realize it until the business has failed.

Or is it truly the lack of traffic and other ebay issues.

I find our business, not on Ebay by the way, has horribly shrinking margins due to the very low overhead of the internet, as the market shrinks for our product (money) more and more out of work employees of our competitors have started their own one man business and our margins in general have shrunk to approximately 40% of what they were 10 years ago on the net making it difficult to show a profit.

By the way our biggest year on the net was $700,000,000.00 in loan applications, and due to poor credit and good credit in the mix we earned a decent living though not woderful.

Is their an alternative site to Ebay that works? We are new to auction business having never sold anything on ebay, though I have listed approximatley 10 items that I own personally, I figured maybe I was doing something wrong? I have a couple of motorcycles and travel trailers to sell, am I simply wasting my time and money, I have sold a few (less that 10) on craigs list in my area but figured I need national coverage to sell $10,000 items not just the local market.

By: Paul Scott

Paul Scott — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 23:40:54 +0000

I agree that it is dying I remember I could pay for things via post now I have been forced into Paypal. it just needs to think what is important to the users. I think listing fees may vanish in the future.

By: Kelly

Kelly — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 21:33:52 +0000

One huge correction the biggest repeated misquote of all time – money is the root of all evil. Not true, correctly quoted its “the lust of money is the root of all evil.” eBay lusts after the money and that is their downfall.

eBay no longer provides value for the money given to them for advertising. I’ve been selling on eBay and online for over a decade, I’ve sold literally millions and millions of dollars of product on and off eBay. At one point I was making $2000 or more a day in real clear profit after fees. Good money for a two person operation. $2000 per day seven days a week and twice on Sunday.

eBay kept lusting after the money and lost sight of who their customers are. eBay’s customers are the sellers not the buyers. The high fees charged to sellers has finally killed the site. The buyers and bidders are not eBay’s customers they are my customers and the other seller’s customers.

Now eBay is a stale ghost town of the same tired stock photos, low quality, low priced products. There’s no profit in it and no fun in it. I closed my eBay store as the profits tanked along with the page views. I used to get 1200 to 1300 page views on a $1000 product in 7 days. When that happened it had a 1 in 3 chance of selling. Now the same product gets maybe 100 to 120 page views and almost never sells on eBay.

My eBay related profits dropped from about $50,000 to $70,000 per month to less than $2,000 That is why eBay is doomed. There is no point in selling on their site.