Why Ebay Lost Its Way and How it Can Make a Comeback

I think it's been almost a decade since I made my first buy on Ebay. Used to hang out at the site and bid on that rare video game, DVD movie, media curiousity or pop culture keepsake. Whereas before I thoroughly enjoyed the excitement of the bidding wars, now I am often forced into Buy It Now mode since the advent of E instant gratification has spawned a backlash that forces consumers into quick fix buying so as to bypass big shot sellers who take up too much ad space.

Remember the good old days of Ebay? You could search for items and find what you wanted in a flash. And it was that cut to the chase flavor that made it the E destination for online garage sale bargain hunters. In effect, it was the poor man's Amazon. And you weren't forced to click through an endless, laborious less is more search template especially designed to feature popular bulk rate products up front while individual ads were relegated to bottom dweller sales status.

As I write this, Ebay has introduced a new poorly designed search function that makes it much more difficult to find what you want. It's as if market researchers think users aren't buying or selling as much because they're not spending enough time at the site. On the contrary. The untold reason why is that Ebay has become bloated with powers sellers who hog and clog the listings, overcharge mailing fees and offer poor service due to their sheer volume of business.

We will never have the Ebay we once had because the Internet has changed. Movers and shakers in the E netlands always shut out the little guy and go where the money's at. This is what cyber salemanship has come to in a day and age in which the Internet has been auctioned off and bought and sold by roguish barons whose only perception of economic morality is the golden rulership of dollar and cents. For net neutrality has been replaced by a pay to play mentality.

The result is that you can't easily sell anything anymore on Ebay. The listing rates are too inflated. Moreover, unless you wanna pay through the nose, your lost little ad will stand out like a poor dry sand pebble at a wet rich man's beach. List an item sometime. Try as you will, "other" category tricks won't offset the sheer nature of the beast. For fittest sales survivalist online have more to do than just place ads. Financial marketing trade secrets give them an unfair advantage.

Said competition of which I speak has to do with the monopolization of ad space. Think of yourself as a traveling salesman in a community in which you must peddle or plug your wares not in your own makeshift space but in a mall filled with endless retailers. Ebay lets a power seller with big bucks list products half a dozen times or more while those who sell one item can do little but get lost in the shuffle. And this is the failsafe cyberspace equivalent of a virtual E trust.

A fair online trade playing field may be a lot to ask. But the dot com revolution went bust because the taste of E consumers was mistaken for a 24/7 impulse purchase pastime rather than the weekend yardsale practice that it truly is. Misjudging the fan base as such, the folly of the Ebay empire is reserving the ad space spoils for entrepreneurial shop keepers and not so much loyalists of the site itself who originally made up the demographic lifeblood of its success.

Ebay's evolution as an E portal for bulk business discourages an individualist free market, raises the prices of services and items and drives away old and new customers in droves. Outsoursing the nature of its flea market roots to placate big business, it becomes just another online retailer where real people are shut out in favor of bottom line moneymen. Fair play is still up for sale to E bullies with the most bucks. That just doesn't include Mrs & Mrs. Ma & Pa Ebay anymore.

In order to return to its roots of everyman competition instead of power seller bias, Ebay needs to diversify ad listings. Casual single item sellers should have their own separate category and not have to share list pages with those for whom Ebay is a formal source of income or a means of making a living. To make an analogy, a humble Sunday yard salesman just in it for nickles and dimes should not have to compete in the same locale with the local grocer or Walmart.