The Real Future of Ebay; After Their Recent Agreements with Yahoo and Google!
Is EBay Trying to Become a Shopping Portal?
The evidence is starting to appear on the site. A recent search for Levis Jeans 1967 on eBay.com registered 0 auction listings and 1 store listing as well as Yahoo Sponsored links on the right side of the page. I'm sure Google AdWords will be appearing Internationally very soon.
As you can see, an eBay Store Seller is selling a pair of Levis Jeans from 1967, and Yahoo is serving up paid ads for Levi's Jeans as well. (I believe they are still in test mode but any sponsored links competing with a seller's listings is troubling). In May, when this initiative was announced, it was stated that Yahoo-sponsored links would only show up when there was no eBay search result. As you can see that is no longer the case. In July Ina Steiner of AuctionBytes wrote a nice article detailing the program, so I won't duplicate that effort here. What has me intrigued is how this introduction of sponsored links on eBay dovetails with their fee increase in stores. Bill Cobb stated in his announcement: "Today, I want to inform you of changes we're making to eBay.com - changes intended to rebalance the overall eBay marketplace by further distinguishing the roles of core listing formats and our Store Inventory format. In short, we're improving the advantages of selling in core listing formats-and taking action to manage the proportion of Store Inventory listings-to ensure that the buying experience on eBay stays true to shoppers' expectations." A fairly straightforward statement, but let's read between the lines. Ebay is now serving up ads when there are limited search results and there were far too many items showing up in search with the flood of store inventory, limiting the number of sponsored ad possibilities. Stay with me here. A reduction in slow moving search hogging listings will open the door to more sponsored links, therefore more incremental revenue for eBay. With fewer items listed on the site (In Ebay's view, the items that weren't selling anyway) there would be an even larger number of null or limited items searches for Yahoo-sponsored Ads. Brilliant! Brilliant! I'm not suggesting this was the sole motivation for the fee increase but I do believe it was part of the discussion.
Now for the impact on sellers: eBay has so strained their relationship with the very people who send them PayPal payments every month that they are on the edge of losing them completely! It is not only the fee increase and fake goods and fee avoidance, etc. that is affecting store sellers, eBay has lost them emotionally. Right now it's the Store Sellers who are feeling the pain, but Core Sellers aren't far behind. At one time eBay enjoyed an almost religious devotion from its sellers. Now they are getting fed up and thinking about moving. You can't treat sellers like cattle, prodding them this way and that as you drive them to the slaughter. Unfortunately the prevailing attitude at eBay and on Wall Street is: Where will they go? No other site brings as many buyers! There are more sellers where they came from, etc. I don't believe that to be the case any longer. While there is little real competition for auctions there is growing competition for stores and now that eBay has priced themselves out of the Stores business new sellers may think twice before signing up. My guess is 1st quarter 2007 there are going to be a lot more null searches for those sponsored links.
My suggestion to all sellers on ebay, though the problems for Store Sellers are most acute; prepare for life outside of eBay. The only way for you to take control of your business is to use eBay for what it is best at-a customer acquisition tool. Who knows maybe your next website lead will come from an eBay search.
Cheers!
Published by Randy Smythe
I write about ecommerce, ideas, Single Parenthood, and Squidoo View profile
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- What has me intrigued is how this introduction of sponsored links on eBay dovetails with their fee i
- In May, when this initiative was announced, it was stated that Yahoo-sponsored links would only show
- My suggestion to all sellers on ebay, though the problems for Store Sellers are most acute; prepare
14 Comments
Post a CommentEbay has been out to destroy itself for a while now. They had you thinking that Ebay bought paypal but through paypal is where trouble really got started as they are satin themselves. They needed a place on the net were they can control on-line sales, they don't want you to go anywhere else but they don't want you to succeed either. They want to be able to get a piece of every pie yet make sure they keep you down where you can be controlled. How do you do that? Well, you seen how they did and used Ebay and paypal to get it done. Just think about it. Have you ever heard anything go wrong with an Ebay transaction that makes the news? With all the billions of transactions you don't think some crazy got upset and found a sellers address went there and shot them or something? But if someone using craigslist gets even a hang nail it's all over the news, Now come on! Here's the connection and you figure it out. Ebay, Paypal, AOL, CNN, Obama, China. Against Israel, FOX, Wall Street and Big Oil
P. Cook - Please go to my new blog at www.rksmythe.blogspot.com I've answered your question there. Also checkout my latest article. Thanks! Randy
My advice would be to just set up your own website and spend the money you were previously giving to eBay hand over fist on advertising and self-promotion. eBay aren't a stable business partner.
Don't just open a store; join a network like Kaqoo.com.
SJ - It was just a link to this article with some comments from sellers. It was deleted because I commented on a few things. Others have said the same things I did but I don't think eBay wanted me stirring things up. I broke the rules so I paid the price.
Anonymous, looks like the thread has been zapped. I tried to type it in as you can't copy and paste from this site. Did you copy any of the postings? If so, please share.
{{danged paragraph limits that aren't shown!}}
I wonder how big the mgmt bonuses for 1QTR07 will be when they have chased off a large percentage of the sellers?
I know that once we close our store, I won't worry about reopening it. Some on the boards are happy, saying "Good, go! More customers for us!" But that isn't the case! Long term, there needs to be variety to draw customers to a place like eBay. They want to be the first place you think of for buying high-end goods. In my best SpongeBob voice - Good luck with that! Meanwhile, I'll do what I should have been doing all this year - getting my own place going. (And I can list color choices there too!) : )
Agreed with this article. Before, the competitors were there, but they were like generics on a shelf of name-brand. eBay still fails to see store owners as their customers, and thinks BUYERS are the ones to woo. Without sellers, the buyers won't have anything to purchase. If I was BV, WP or one of the many others out there, I'd be recycling aluminum cans if I had to, to come up with an advertising budget, and get my name out there! BV & WP both have decent store offerings. I had a BV store a couple years ago, but they didn't have the traffic eBay had. HAD. Past tense, as in, just not all that anymore. Too bad they won't share their vision. I can't get on board when I don't know where you are going. I am working as fast as I can on our own website. This was at least a wake up call out of complacency. We were happy on eBay, so didn't even have our own website on the agenda until 2007. eBay forced our hand, so we are scrambling to get up and running. So be it. I wonder how big the
Tony - I am interested in documenting the auto correct problem you mention. Can you email me some detail so I can look into it? Just use the contact me button. Thanks Randy
These mis-spelling, auto-corrections that I write about, I know that they WERE in use for at least the past 2 years - they pertain to the items I have regularly stocked & sold since '99.