najdorf

Has eBay Reached the Limit of the Network Effect?

This article's sources may have some facts in them, but the post contains no hard information. Is eBay traffic down? Are people refusing to pay the fees? What kind of market share have competitors taken?

As far as I know, eBay remains pretty much the only game in town, at least in the US. Why would I try to sell my stuff on a site that fewer people visit? On eBay you can predict fairly reliably what will sell and get a price that approximates fair values.

As far as being cumbersome to use, what makes you think that the mechanism of selling any kind of stuff by auction to people you've never met who haven't seen the stuff should be really really easy? You're always going to have to upload a picture, write a description, make plans for payment and shipping, deal with idiots, etc. You're always going to have to pay fees to eBay for facilitating this process. How could the eBay site make this easier for you? If you have an idea, write to them and maybe they'll implement it.

Also, I haven't had one problem with eBay or Paypal in terms of site access or effectiveness, payment processing problems, etc. I'd say any problems are more likely due to user error than site error. People don't like to admit that they're very bad at using products and so they blame the company. You can also see this pattern in all the people who complain about their bank because it charges them overdraft fees.