downwithebay's Comments

eBay: Growth at the Right Bid

Sun, 18 Oct 2009 13:21:16 -0400

Chuck,
I encourage you to checkout Quantcast.com before putting much faith in Donahoe's thesis of projected earnings. Simply enter the name of any/all of Ebay own companies into quantcast's traffic search and you'll see for yourself just how dismall things have become for Ebay since Donahoe took over the helm as President and now CEO of Ebay. The numbers look pretty scary.

According to Quantcast,
Ebay.com site traffics has fallen from 95.5 million unique monthly visits in 03/07 down to 62.1 in Oct 09, and YoY traffic for Q3/09 is down slightly from Q3/08.

Shopping.com traffic has steadily fallen from 25 million monthly inn 04/07 down to 3.3 million in 09/09, and Q3/09 traffic stats are down from Q3/08.

Donahoe claims PayPal has been experiencing tremendous growth over past 12 months, yet traffic numbers for all 3 quarters have actually been down slightly compared to first 3 quarters of 08.

Half.com monthly traffic has plummeted from 220k unique visits in 04/07 down to 18k for each quarter in 09.

Q3/09 ProStore traffic is down roughly 20 percent compared to Q3/08

Rent.com monthly traffic has steadily declined from Q3/08 and YoY

Kijiji monthly traffic is down roughly 30% compared to Q3/08.

Stubhub monthly traffic is down measurably compared to Q3/08

Other facts:
Ebay loses $64mil in LVMH lawsuit in Q3/09 and opened the doors for many other trademark owners that feel Ebay is an active participant in the sale of counterfeit good.
Ebay currently dealing with 2 additional significant lawsuits (craigslist and Skype) that could prove to be quite costly depending on outcome.
As of 10/1/09, there were 36% less veteran sellers actively selling than there was in 02/08 many of whom no longer seller or BUY on ebay now.

Until fall 08, Ebay stores, ebay affiliates and ebay paid advertisements completely dominated top placement in google searches for pretty much every conceivable keyword search. For nearly 8 months now, ebay stores and other related traffic drivers have been completely non existent in google search resulting in a massive loss of traffic for most ebay stores.

Ebay and Channel Adviser tout how there has been sales growth on Ebay in recent months, but aside from a very narrow group of larger ebay businesses that is getting the bulk of traffic funneled directly to them, almost all other sellers appear to be experiencing 30-70% less sales compared to Q3/08.

Three Value Stocks That Appear Ridiculously Cheap

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:10:10 -0500

Here's an interesting find. 8 SHORT days ago a bunch of the suits at Feebay were awarded a TON of stock for their performance in 2007-2008. ALL the big numbers below are the number of shares each putz received. Pretty stinking sad when shares of Feebay stock have plummeted roughly 60 percent in one year, The company has never paid a dividend, YET Feebay suits get rewarded with MANY 1000s of shares in bonus stock. Absolutely B.S.!

02/27/09 NORRINGTON LORRIE M Exercise 58,334 NA NA
02/27/09 SWAN ROBERT HOLMES Exercise 66,667 NA NA
02/27/09 THOMPSON SCOTT Exercise 8,334 NA NA
02/27/09 AXELROD ELIZABETH LYNN Exercise 46,667 NA NA
02/27/09 DONAHOE JOHN JOSEPH Exercise 127,196 NA NA
02/27/09 JACOBSON MICHAEL RICHARD Exercise 41,667 NA NA

eBay to Hold Analyst/Investor Day: Ten Questions to Ask Them

Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:08:14 -0500

Here's an interesting find. 8 SHORT days ago a bunch of the suits at Feebay were awarded a TON of stock for their performance in 2007-2008. ALL the big numbers below are the number of shares each putz received. Pretty stinking sad when shares of Feebay stock have plummeted roughly 60 percent in one year, YET Feebay suits get rewarded with MANY 1000s of shares in bonus stock. Absolutely B.S.!

02/27/09 NORRINGTON LORRIE M Exercise 58,334 NA NA
02/27/09 SWAN ROBERT HOLMES Exercise 66,667 NA NA
02/27/09 THOMPSON SCOTT Exercise 8,334 NA NA
02/27/09 AXELROD ELIZABETH LYNN Exercise 46,667 NA NA
02/27/09 DONAHOE JOHN JOSEPH Exercise 127,196 NA NA
02/27/09 JACOBSON MICHAEL RICHARD Exercise 41,667 NA NA

Suggestions for eBay 2.0

Mon, 23 Feb 2009 20:13:52 -0500

Scot,
Your entire series was awesome! Great analysis and vision! 5 STARS!!!!!!!!!!

On Feb 23 05:57 PM Patricia013 wrote:
>
> One thing I would like to see. I'm sick and tired of 12 month powersellers
> being "trustworthy" while my 10 year spotless record takes a back
> seat. I would like to be able to pay Ebay for intense verification
> of credit rating for sellers. I'll match my 800+ fico score with
> the best of them! Then the CREAM of that crop can be considered
> trustworthy...perhaps have a small verified logo attached to their
> ID...nothing fancy but something that tells the buyer that THIS is
> a proven trustworthy seller. Overstock uses something similar.

>

I will agree with you that being a power seller certainly doesnt constitute a sellers overall trustworthiness.....bu... by the same token, just because someone has a high fico score doesnt necessarily merit labelling the person a trustworthy seller either. Heck, Ebay Corp. has awesome fico ratings, but you and I both no Ebay is not the most trustworthy company, nor is everyone with high fico scores trustworthy business people either.

Although I was never a big time seller, I generated over 7000 sales (5500 feedbacks over the years, lifetime feedback rating of 99.9 with 5.0 and 4.9 DSRs.
BUT my fico score royally sucks because of loss of job, stock market losses and health problems of a family member that exhausted all of my resources in a very short time. Having a less than desirable fico score in this crazy economy with so many folks losing their jobs cerrtainly does not mean that a person is not a trustworthy online seller. I beg to differ with you on that point.

Some Positives, But Problems Persist at eBay

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 15:02:13 -0500

Here's some growth stats for Ioffer.com....Another site ebay buyers and sellers are migrating to.

iOffer.com reported record dollar sales, units sold, new items listed, and new memberships over the past six weeks from November 1, 2008 to December 15, 2008. The "trading community" marketplace encourages negotiation between buyers and sellers and reported key metrics for the holiday shopping season (November 1 to December 15). Data from 2007 is listed first, followed by the same period in 2008.

Dollar Sales: $5.5 million vs. $15.1 million (175% growth)
Unit Sales: 121,323 vs. 275,813 (127% growth)
New Item Listings: 470,846 vs. 1,213,476 (158% growth)
Traffic: 3 million visits vs. 9 million visits (198% growth)
Page Views: 31 million vs. 80 million (158% growth)
New Member Registration: 44,192 vs. 126,175 (186% growth)

That's a whole lot of product that once used to be listed on ebay, that ebay made money on regardless of whether it sold or not. The colmination of ebay user traffic continuing to migrate to other sales venues obviously is impacting ebay's bottom line more than there care to admit. I'd venture to say at least 700,000 sellers have either stopped selling and BUYING on ebay this year, or greatly reduced both. Not only has ebay lost all the revenues from sellers fees from all these sellers, but MANY of the sellers that left Ebay this year pissed off were some of the most frequent shoppers on ebay so Ebay lost the collective buying power of a massive number of once frequent ebay shoppers.

The 800 LB gorilla is now the 700 LB gorilla and shedding weight quickly.

Some Positives, But Problems Persist at eBay

Thu, 08 Jan 2009 11:21:10 -0500

While ebay management and the typically analyst dont view loss of sellers leaving ebay as a major variable to ebay steady declines....I beg to differ with you. Like many ebay sellers, buyers are leaving ebay too. Below is some data that came out today of just one lesser known buy/sell platform where ebay shoppers and sellers are moving to in large numbers.

Etsy released December 2008 sales numbers that show just how much traction the online marketplace for homemade and vintage goods has gained in the past year. The value of goods sold on the site was $12.9 million - a 20 percent increase over the previous month, and a 153 percent increase from December 2007. Etsy merchants sold 815,327 items in December 2008, a 13.4 percent increase from November and a 140 percent increase year over year.

Additional statistics for December 2008 include: 1,098,644 new items were listed (down from 1,143,942 items in November); 164,789 new members joined the Etsy community, including 19,481 new sellers; and 410,365,372 page views were recorded on the site, essentially the same number as November.

Ioffer.com's sales and growth stats are just as impressive, and many other smaller sites like bonanzle, ecrater, atomicmall and ebids are experiencing massive growth registering as many as a 1000s new sellers daily many of who are attracting many of their ebay customers to follow.

It amazes me that Analyst devote so much time crunching numbers, yet spend so little time LISTENING to Ebay's ONCE most loyal customer as to the REAL reasons for many of Ebay's shortcomings like GMV, user stats etc....

In Ebay's quest to concentrate solely on catering to a very small percentage of it's userbase while completely screwing over the masses....The sellers Donahoe refers to as "NOISE" are not only taking their business elsewhere, but taking their customers with them to.

Now that the holidays are over....investors can expect another large exodus of ebay sellers of all businesses sizes establishing storefronts on the net and conacting their entire ebay customer base about their new online storefront location.

Ebay's greed and lack of respect for it most avid/loyal user base with be the downfall of Ebay marketplace in 2009.

What Will Become of eBay?

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 22:16:52 -0500

It's so ironic the media accepts what Donahoe says about auctions dying as a significant drop in ebay traffic.

Donahoe is the one that doesnt like auctions not the average ebay user!

Prior to Donahoe taking over the reins at ebay, our company had awesome sell thru rates on most anything we listed auction format. As soon as ebay implemented best match and heavily favored fixed price listings in their default search engine, our sales plummeted so draastically we were forced to close our two ebay stores after having been successful power sellers for nearly 6 years on both store accounts.

Virtually everone that uses ebay thoroughly hates the new search engine. Most auction listing get buried in nondefault searches than many ebay users dont ever even see. Between Ebay's new highly disputed DSR system, Forcing the issue of fixed prices and free shipping, new 21 day hold on paypal funds, non-existent customer support, and purposely trying to drive off all small businesses and casual sellers....Ebay has lost a substantial number of high quality sellers many of whom were some of the most avid shoppers in the site.

Most of the mega sellers ebay is heavily propmoting alll have their own website and meerely use ebay's seller platform to generate customers for their own website which has caused a deterioration of ebay buyer traffic.

Sellers of all sizes have reestablished themselves on either their own website or one of the many lesser known buy/sell platforms and enticed many of their previous ebay buyers to shop on these new sites.

Sites like ecrater, etsy, ioffer, onlineauctions, ebids, bonanzle, Amazon and at least 20 other buy/sell platforms have experienced tremendous user growth this year, and the vast majority of that growth has been EX ebay sellers and EX ebay buyers.

Another reason for ebay's steady declines on both user traffic and revenues this year has come at the hands of Donahoe taking proactive steps to forcing many sellers of counterfeit goods off the site. Due to stricter federal enforcement and trademark owner pressures on ebay in recent times, Ebay for the first time EVER has been taken steps to ban many sellers offering counterfeit goods.

For years Ebay closed their eyes to the trademark infringement problem and reaped billions of dollars in revenues from the sale of luxury counterfeits on their site relying heavily in their credo "we're just a venue", and never took policing their site seriously for online fraud. This new crack down Donahoe has started has dramatically impact ebay's bottomline revenues and site traffic while sites like Ioffer.com are now the prodominate online site where much of these counterfeit luxury goods are bought and sold. In my opinion that's the main reason Ioffer has experienced 168 percent growth this year

Dollar Sales: $5.5 million vs. $15.1 million (175% growth)
- Unit Sales: 121,323 vs. 275,813 (127% growth)
- New Item Listings: 470,846 vs. 1,213,476 (158% growth)
- Traffic: 3 million visits vs. 9 million visits (198% growth)
- Page Views: 31 million vs. 80 million (158% growth)
- New Member Registration: 44,192 vs. 126,175 (186% growth)

In summary:

Ebay has forced a massive number of great, respectable small volume sellers off the site this year

Many of these small volume sellers Ebay has purposely forced off the site were not only sellers but regualr ebay shoppers.

Sellers of all business sizes have reestablished themselves on other buy/sell venues and taken some of their ebay buyers with them.

Ebay is heavily promoting "Big Box" sellers that all have websites and are quickly eroding ebay buyer traffic enticing buyer to shop their website when making future purchases.

Ebay has booted a large number of counterfeit luxury goods sellers that once generated huge revenues for ebay.

It's going to take one heck of alot of new "diamond sellers" and Ebay marketing to ever recover from the massive loss of users and revenues Ebay once counted on.

Ebay is going down the tube fast!

.

Facebook: Looking for a Classifieds Partner

Mon, 24 Nov 2008 14:28:13 -0500

How the heck is Kijiji that gets 82.4k monthly visits a BIG threat to facebook's classified that gets over 42 million unique monthly visitors on their site.

With the right partner, facebook can quickly make Donahoe and cronies regret ever getting into the online classified biz!

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:17:19 -0400

NEW YORK, Oct 22, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition (IACC) announced today that it has filed an amicus ("friend of the court") brief with the United States Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in support of Tiffany's appeal in its lawsuit against eBay. The brief references eBay's persistent failure to meet its obligations to prevent illegal sales of counterfeit and infringing goods on its site and explains why the Court should hold eBay contributorily liable for its failure to do so.
The law is clear: if a marketplace operator either actually knows, or should have known about widespread counterfeiting, it is obligated to take action both to prevent that illegal conduct and to stop providing services to those engaged in the violation. Tiffany sent eBay 20,915 notices about the "deluge of counterfeit merchandise" in 2003; 45,242 in 2004; 59,012 in 2005; and 134,779 in 2006. Despite being aware of the continuing extraordinary ongoing volume of counterfeit Tiffany trade on its site, eBay continued to provide material assistance to direct infringers rather than implementing policies that could have reduced the volume of counterfeit items, the IACC brief says.

Robert Barchiesi, President of the IACC said, "Counterfeiting is a criminal activity carried out on global scale and, with eBay turning a blind eye, broadly on the Internet. In fact, eBay is estimated to provide the forum for 29 percent of the entire online counterfeit market, which has widespread public health and safety hazards, as well as causing substantial economic harm to legitimate business...

...until the U.S. judicial system takes appropriate action with respect to eBay in forcing it to more aggressively fight the proliferation of counterfeit sales through its site, the IACC warns consumers that they should not feel confident in the legitimacy of certain of the products they acquire on eBay.

SOURCE: The International Anti-Counterfeiting Coalition

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:48:02 -0400

again...I a[ologive for typos....some of my keys on this old keyboard tend to stick, and I foolishly hit the publish button before prooofreading most of the time.

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 13:45:51 -0400

mel-ster,

I highly suggest you dont pay for a lifetime memebrship at OLA until you've sold there for awhile. OLA has experience alot of seller growth this year, but Fain after nearly 11 years as site own has ever gotten the site and the sellers listings RSS google feed and exposure in search engines.

Total site traffic for OLA is only about 34K and aside from seller growth, there has not been any real traffic growth at OLA for 10 years now. Ecrater on the otherhand os a different store. Although ecrater is a new site, ecrater already gets nearly 800k unique visiters monthly which is almost as much site traffic as Ioffer gets in U.S. user traffic.

I'm impressed with ecrater's development team. Sellers listings are beginning to show up high in google searches and traffic is growing quickly.

I'd also like to mention a few other sites you might want to check out.....Rubylane and goantiques which cater to buyers and sellers of vintage things and antiques. Both sites get nearly 30 times more monthly traffic than OLA, and they are niche sites catering to buyers interested in vintage products.

I'd also suggest checking out bonanzle. It a very new site, but has already registered 5000 new sellers in just the past few months, and is a really cool site with enormous potential. Atomicmall is another site you may want to check out.

I'm not trying to discourage you from selling at OLA, but based on my own experience and the experience of alot of sellers I know that sell there....there are actually more sellers on OLA than there are buyers which doesnt work....and Fain just doesnt seem to be motivated to make the site search engine friendly.

eBay in the Basement - But Not for Long

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:59:26 -0400

BTW investor, according to quantcast user traffic at paypal hase been declining since Q2 with 700k less users in the month of Sept. than in last month of Q2. Since ebay doesnt use GAAP aucting, I serious doubt paypal's growth numbers are very accurate knowing user traffic is steadily declining.

As far as skype is concerned, ebay is still vigorously looking for a buyer for skype, so no matter how much they hype up skype, ebay themselves appparently dont see a promising future for skype.

Now, they've just borrowed a billion bucks to finance Bill Me Later and the ad sites they just purchased.

Ebay stock may still be a good value at these prices, but with the economy the way it is coupled with Donahues radical approach in investments, I forsee little up movement on this stock for quite some time, and I certainly dont see getting something for nothing since that something is currently ruining both Doanhoe's and Ebay's image.

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:36:24 -0400

oops...sorry for the typos...my brain tends to work faster than my fingertips when typing

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 12:34:38 -0400

Hi Dinah,
I dont think Doanhue cares whether sellers notic things like that or not, but in reality there are countless numbers of good, honest, reputable sellers on ebay scratching their heads trying to figure out why their sales are so bad, and still have no clue Donahue is manipulating their listings on search AND more than likely manipulating feedback to reduce PS discounts and justify why SO MANY sellers items never show up in best match.

As for myself, when I did get best match....ebay always seem to pick my worst sellers to expose in best match, and all my super high sell thru type items ended up in ending soonest merely because my prices were better than larger competitors ebay favors on search.

I've claims recent sales have alot to do with best match, but the more I study the categories I used to list in, many of the items have never been listed in core before SO how the heck could the seller established a history of sales. The whole system is corrupt since Donahue took over, and I feel aweful for all the naive folks that still have no clue just how badly Donahue is undermining the vast majority of sellers.

Most folks are still more troubled over not being able to give negative feedback to non paying bidders....In my opinion that should be the least of their worries at this point. I'm truly shocked to see so many small volume sellers still on ebay considering most of them are having such poor sell thru conversions so many of them are losing alot of money after factoring in listing fees on so many items that dont get views much less bids.

eBay Q3: What it Means for Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 10:01:58 -0400

to me the saddest part is that ebay claims that "buyer satisfaction" is their ultimate goal, and they are taking steps to suspend "bad sellers" with less than desirable DSR ratings....yet I have come accrossed quite a few large ebay vendors that have DSR as low as 4.0, and ebay takes no action against these sellers and still gives them high exposure in search.

I just found a large media seller that has over 150,000 feedbacks, racking up tons of bad "buyer experiences" and has a 12 month DSRs og 4.6, 4.5, 4.2 and 4.0. Seller was stripped of power seller status BUT still gets high visibility in search and has never been restricted or suspended..yet many small businesses are suspended with far better buyer satisfaction ratings.

I've been monitoring a large ebay vendor that is a Pesa member that has had a 4.2 DSR for shipping time for many months now, yet their merchdise still gets high visibilily in best match searches, and never been subjected to the harrassment ebay gives smaller companies with better buyer approval ratings.

I find that many of the large vendors have far worse overall buyer satisfaction ratings than majority of small businesses on ebay that NEVER seem to get CONSISTENT best match exposure yet more often than not are eligible for some type of power seller discount indicating their seller performance is more than acceptable.

In my opinion it should be ilegal what ebay has been doing manipullating searches giving large vendors the bulk of best match exposure while bronze power sellers, casual sellers, auction sellers and even silver power sellers are getting totall shafted getting very little default search engine exposure and literally throwing advertising money down the drain getting no listing exposure on ebay now.

Although I decided to stop doing business on and with ebay after 5 years as a bronze power seller with near perfect buyer satisfaction ratings, I monitor the categories I used to list in frequently. Over 90% of the search exposure is ONly being given to about one tenth of the sellers listing in that category which are are either large online retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers OR sellers offering fixed prices with FREE shipping). Hardly any auctions ever show up in best match even though the same auctions typically had 100% sell thrus prior to these manipulative changes, and if the seller isnt offering free shipping or top volume seller in the category...chance of getting listing visibility in best match search is nearly impossible regardless how good the sellers DSRs and previous sales were.

I think it is truly sicken how ebay suits an Ebay PR folks put such a BS spin on everything. They continue to tell the public some selllers just dont like change, when in reality most of us just want the services we PAID for which is listing visibilty on their site...NOT having our listings buried in nondefault ssearch engines that drastically reduces viewing traffic and sales and ultimately results in wasted advertising dollars and financial losses.

I am so flippin glad my fiancee and I decided to close our two ebay stores and discontinue doing business on and with ebay. After over 21k sales in past 5 years between our two stores coupled with 99.8 feedback ratings and DSR scores of 4.8s and 4.9 only to be continually told we some how need to improve performance to get best match exposure is utterly ludacris. Ebay has turned into a team of ruthless, manipulative liars that simply can not be trusted what-so-ever. They have an agenda, and the agenda that obviously doesnt include small busineses and casual sellers yet they continue to hype up auctions and how they encourage casual sellers to sell on ebay...taking their hard earned money and giving nothing in return.

It interesting that ebay doesnt seem to realize that these same large companies Ebay heavily favor in best match searches typically have their own website with shopping cart, and the vast majority of these big vendors immediately begin promoting their websites to their ebay customers immediately after the initial ebay transaction. Is Donahue so fullish he cant see that while the large vendors may be generating more revenue for ebay in the short term, that these same online merchants, manufacturers, whoelsalers and completely eroding mainstream buyer traffic on ebay as more and more buyers are now going directly to these large vendors websites when making future purchases? Ebay and most analyst believe Amazon is biggest competitor when on reality ebay's biggest competitor for ebay shoppers are the same big businesses ebay heavily favors ion their site. Just since Q1 when Donahue took over as CEO and began heavily favoring large vendors in Best match searches, monthly site traffic has declined by roughly 10 million visits. How can so many people not make the connection that big companies that sell on ebay are lirterlally eroding all the buyers.

Donahoes disruptive innovations suck and in both the short term and the long term will be bad for investors as traffic and revenues for marketplace and paypal steadily decline.

Investors better hope and pray stubhub, shopping.com, skype and ebay's new ad businesses grow because marketplace is dying fast, and ultimately will hurt their cash cow paypal businesses. Interesting how googles merchant services are still experience modest growth while paypal monthly traffic has decllined 700k monthly visits since Q1.

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Tue, 21 Oct 2008 09:07:43 -0400

eBay Q3: What it Means for Sellers

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 15:01:31 -0400

Im truly blown away stock analyst continue to assume Amazon is the driving force is behind ebay marketplace revenues and growth, and Q4.

several 100,000 sellers have been forced off ebay this year or at least have caused them to establish a realistic selling alternative. And, the majority of those sellers are not all flocking to amazon.

Other buy/sell platforms are experience steady growth while ebay's site traffic AND Amazon's traffic has steadily declines month afer month this entire year. Craiglist monthly site traffic is up 1.7 million since Q1, Ioffer monthly traffic is up 500k since Q1, ecrater traffic up 170k, etsy traffic is up 80k, rubylane traffic is up 70k, monthly traffic at goantiques is up 60K, ebid monthly traffic is up 60k just to name a few sites where ebay sellers are moving to....and many of their ebay customers are following them to their new storefronts.

At least 20k small businesses closed their ebay stores this year because of all the radical changes that have perpetually evolved, and a large percentage of them started their own websites rather than subject themselves to Donahoe's nonsense. Or, concentrated locally for sales.

Spend a little time at powersellersunite.com, and you will find the vast majority of companies (both large and smaller) are mainly focusing on website sales NOT Amazon sales. emovieposters is one example of a top 10 ebay seller that jumped ship on ebay and started his own website, and is more profitable now than he ever was on ebay.

Another variable I've yet to see any analyst consider and talk about is the fact that MANY of the manufacturers, wholesalers, mass merchandisers and large retail companies that do a large volume of business on ebay are collectively eroding a ssignificant percentage of mainstream ebay shoppers by heavily promoting their websites immediately after the intial ebay sale. Donahoe favors large volume sellers, but in reality these big guns have managed to erode ebay's mainstream traffic as more and more satisfied customers go directly to their website when they want to make future purchases.

Amazon has better control of those variables...Ebay doesnt and never did. Since J. Donahoe took over as CEO, ebay has heavily favored the largest sellers in their search engines, and for that reason it should be expected that site traffic will continue to slowly deteriorate.
MArketplace MAY have experience 3 percent new user growth, BUT ebay just lost AT LEAST 10-15% of its loyal base of shoppers when they drove off so many sellers most of who were already steady ebay shoppers.

I get discount coupons from many of the large ebay vendors I've purchase from....and the coupons are generally only valid if I shop their website where these companies can avoid ebay's escalating fees/commissions and enable these companies to have more control over their business.

I have to laugh sometimes when I see the constant comparison of Amazon and Ebay. Both companies are vastly different and the composition of the sellers on both sites are vastly different as well. You dont find fake tradmark items at Amazon....Ebay is STILL flooded with Fake tradmark items.....many of which are being sold by the very same manufacturers ebay is favoring on search...may produce revenue in the short term, but in the long term buyers will continue to look elsewhere to shop.

Most comapnies on Amazon are based in U.S. Most BIG volume selers on ebay are Based in Asia. Didnt used to be that way, but it is now...which will further cause a decline in buyer traffic over the long term.

The largest percentage of BUSINESSES leaving ebay this year are not flocking to Amazon like so many analyst assume.

Years ago, I would tend to agree, but not in today worldwide internet marketplace where websites with shopping carts are extremely affordable and there is a substantial number of ways to cost effectively market an online store. Heck, ebay listings used to ALWAYS dominate search engine results on google...NOW ebay listings are nowhere to be found.....AND...folks wonder why site traffic is steadily declining?

eBay: Getting Something for Nothing

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 11:52:03 -0400

Bob C,

The OPs comment gave me a chuckle. Obviously he has heard that a few 100,000 sellers have bolted and the 77 zep t-shirts can be found on quite a few other sales venues now.

Since Q1 ebay monthly traffic is down 10 million visitors while virtually quite a few of the smaller, lesser known sites are experience tremendous traffic and revenue growth.

As ebay caters exclusively to large ebay vendors now, shareholders can expect a continuing deterioration of traffic and sales on ebay since MOST large vendors have their own websites use ebay's sales platform merely to drive first time shoppers to their websites offering discounts and other incentives for ebayer's to make future purchases from the sellers website rather than their eebay store.

Donahue and company has no clue just how many mainstream ebay traffic has been getting eroded over the last few years as more and more large online businesses use ebay's platform to drive as many customers to their website once the initial ebay sale has been completed. Ebay think Amazon is their biggest competitor when in reality ebay's biggest competitor is the same online merchants, manufacturers, wholesalers and other large volume sellers that have collectively managed to drive a growing percentage of buyers off ebay and to their websites.

Currently payments on sales from ebay acccount for the largest percentage of paypal's revenues, and as ebay marketplace continues to get less and less monthly traffic and GMV continues falling, PayPals revenues will fall as well.

Shareholders better hope and pray for continue growth from skype, stubhub, shopping.com and their classified ad site, because ebay's once core business os falling apart fast no matter what Donahoe wants to publically claim.

Marketplace is a disaster, and between 100,000s of small volume sellers leaving who are also ebay buyers, coupled with the ongoing errosion of big ebay businesses eroding much of ebay's buyer traffic....things will be getting really ugly over the next coming year.

No Christmas for eBay Sellers

Sun, 19 Oct 2008 10:31:40 -0400

Thank you for your TRUTHFUL article!

After 5+ years of operating a successful ebay business, we recently opted to close our ebay store and now focus all our attention and advertising dollars on our newly established website and other storefronts that we have on some of the lesser known sales venues. My fiancee recently closed here ebay store as well. I was a bronze power seller wth a 99.8 feedback rating, roughly 8,000 sales and my DSRs/buyer satisfaction ratings were 4.9,4,9,4.9 and 4.8. My fiancee was a silver power, had roughly 13,000 sales and here 12 month DSRs are the same as mine. I'd also like to note that many of our customers were steady repeat customers that are now regularly shopping at our other online stores.

Niether myself or my fiancees were big mega sellers, but we did typically generate 300-500 sales each month, and were both forking out anywhere from $1000-$2000 per month in ebay fees and commssions, plus another $1000-$2000 in paypal fees...and that seems to be a problem for Donahoe...If you arent a gold/platinum/diamond seller doing a large volume of monthly business on ebay, Donahoe places little value on your business.

Every change Donahoe has rolled out resulted in both our companies getting less and less site listing exposure, our listings rarely appeared in best match, our sales and sell thru rates plummeted and we actually sufered a loss selling ebay the last 2 months we did busines there after being quite profitable for 5 years straight.

Things have just gotten absurd, and the problems are endless for businesses of all sizes...BUT all these changes have made it virtually impossible for small businesses, casual sellers, auction style sellers to conduct business on ebay both SAFELY and PROFITABLY especially if you dont offer FREE shipping. Ebay hides the vast majority of seller's listing in non default searches and almost exclusively exposes the larger volume businesses that ebay wants to remain on the site. Ironically, many of the big businesses ebay courts and favors in search have much lower buyer satisfaction ratings than most of the small volume sellers being totally isolated from their listings appear in ebay's new default search engine. Donahoe doesnt care about the "buyer Experience", he just used the TRANSPARENT DSR system as a tool to exclude all small volume sellers from best match while continuing to take their hard earned money.

Ebay appears to be purposely trying to drive off small businesses and casual sellers that dont do a large volume of business. Consequently, virtually all the unique, one of a king, eclectic and rare items items you once found on ebay are disappearing as more and more loyal part time sellers and small businesses leave the site. The thing I find most ironic about that is this:

The vast majority of "Big Box" large scale businesses ebay wants on their site ALL have their own websites and merchant accounts for credit card checkout. Much of ebay's buyer traffic is and has been being eroded by the very same big companies ebay wants to court. I've made many many purchases over the years, and without fail, any time I purchased something on ebay from a large volume vendor, that vendor followed up with an email encouraging me to check out their website and typically offered a discount coupon to entice me to make future purchases from their website rather than their ebay store. Commissions on ebay sales run anywhere from 12-15% per sale....for any seller that has a website to market their website to their ebay customers to avoid these feels plus have much more control over your business.

Donahoe wants large online retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, and other large volume type sellers. Ironically these companies DO have websites and have been using ebay's seller platform for years to drive ebay shoppers to their websites. That's the REAL reason site traffic has been steadily deteriorating, and now that ebay is favoring large volume sellers in Best match searches, I forsee a drastic decline in ebay buyer traffic as these big online companies collective erode more and more of ebay's site traffic promoting their websites immediately after the intial ebay sale.

Donahoe called sellers who complained about all his radical "disruptive innovation" policies as NOISE. hmmmm....

Since Doahoe took charge of Ebay monthly site traffic has fallen approximately 10 million since Q1 (from 73 million down to 62.6 million). Yet amazon's monthly traffic has remained fairly stable.
Since Q1 site traffic has increase at Craigslist by 1.7 million, monthly traffic at Ioffer is up 500k, traffic at ecrater is up 130k, etsy is up 80k and ebid is up 60k to name a just a few other lesser known sites that are experiencing growth. As more and more ex ebay sellers continue to contact their ebay customers and notify them of their new store locations....a significant percentage of the new growth these sites are experiencing is ebay buyers shopping with their favorite ex ebay sellers. Keep up the NOISE sellers!

If Donahoe truly believes that site traffic, GMV and revenues at ebay marketplace is because of the weakened economy...the man is truly cluless. Sales have been steadily picking up for many sellers at these lesser known sites, and at seller's webites....and the bulk of the buyers I've had are actually registered ebay users.

Fortunately for both of us, our sales have been steadily picking up at other sales venues, and now that we have our websites fully functional, we are enthusiastic we'll experience solid growth in website traffic and sales once we begin marketing our websites using the $1000s we are saving in ebay fees each month.

We truly loved ebay and the whole unique experience ebay once offered. After 21K sales and well over 500 purchases on ebay, it was hard to let go and move on...abut we are thankful we did! Our enthusiasm for ebay and the trust we once had for that company has been completed destroyed.

eBay's Core Shrivels While Skype Shines

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 11:19:15 -0400

Expect ebay marketplace to continue to shrivel as the bigger busineses ebay is now courting continue to use ebay's platform to drive ebay shoppers to their websites after the intial ebay sale has been made. In my opinion, the significant drop in GMV and user traffic at ebay marketplace has more to do with the bigger businesses on ebay enticing ebay shoppers to their websites more-so than the ecomonic slow down.

Traffic flow to ebay has been steadily declining each month this year....and I can assure you many of the manufacturers, online retailers, wholesaelrs and large volume ebay sellers that have websites are steadily drawing more and more ebay shoppers off the site and to their websites.

eBay in the Basement - But Not for Long

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:51:23 -0400

old ebay seller,

We closed our two ebay stores a little over a month ago, but like yourself have our own website. We NEVER used ebay as a platform to drive ebay shoppers to our website, BUT now that we no longer do business with ebay, we have been gradually contacting our 20,000+ ebay customer base encouraging them to visit our website and offer some really cool promotional methods that have been working great. Our website sales have nearly doubled since we began focusing all of our attention on our web sales rather than our ebay sales.

eBay Is a Losing Bid - Barron's

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 10:43:48 -0400

here's my two cents for what it's worth.

At ebay marketplace, Ebay is focusing hard on attracting and retaining larger, established businesses. Ironically, most of the larger sellers on ebay, ie...online retailers, manufacturers, wholesalers, mass merchandisers, and large volume sellers that have large inventories ALSO have their own websites, and they have their own merchant account to accept online credit card payments.

It has been my experience buying on ebay that the vast majority of larger volume sellers on ebay do in fact immediately begin promoting their website once the intial ebay sale has been made on ebay, and entice shoppers to shop their website rather than their ebay store by offering discount incentives or other forms of promotion.

Let's face it....As a website owner...the total fees associated with a sale is 3-4% transaction fees on a typical merchant account. The fees associated with an ebay sale is 12-15 percent on the sale, pluse a 3 percent paypal transaction fee, plus an additional 30 cent paypal and the listing fees. Not to mention all the red tape associated with ebay's feedback policies. Having more control over their busines coupled with all the extra ebay commssion lowering profit margins is a big incentive for online retailers to drive their ebay customers to their website.

Plus, there are 10s of 1000s of small businesses and mom & pop seller either setting up their own websites or establishing sales roots on one or more of the other lesses know sales venues that are all steadily growing. Any smart seller is contacting their previous ebay customer base and letting them know about their new online storefronts which collectively is also eroding some of ebay's existing buyer traffic.

Ebay claims new user growth was up 3%. I seriously doubt that. In my opinion...the majority of so-called new users are actually sellers registering for new ebay IDs so they can talk more openly about search, feedback, fees etc...in ebay's forum discussions. The forums on ebay are flooded with disatisfied ebay member, and a large percentage of them use a posting ID they created this year...SO...3% new user growth in my opinion is probably a gross exaggeration.

If anything....there has probably been a 20% decline in regular users using ebay for buying or selling in recent months.

Because of ebay's new 30 day fixed price fee structure, total listings may be up, BUT many of the listings are for serious junk that sellers otherwise would never list in core if they had to pay regular listing fees to list.

Since Donahoe took over as CEO and has been heavily favoring these larger businesses....unique, rar, one of a kind, eclectic, intersting products are steadily disappearing from the site, while more mass produced, cheaply made carp from asian based companies are now flooding the site.

If these trends continue...ebay had best foster growth in its other businesses because all ebay marketplace around the globe are declining fast.

eBay Ridiculously Cheap

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:58:26 -0400

I apologize for all the typos...I'm in a rush, but wanted to take the time to respond to your article

eBay Ridiculously Cheap

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:55:30 -0400

Although I would agree with you about ebay being cheap based on the numbers.....one thing I see worth noting is this:

The vast majority of larger business ebay is favoring at ebay marketplace like manufacturers, mass merchandisers and large volume sellers almost all have their own websites, and a very large percentage of these businesses getting most of the exposure on ebay do in fact try quite hard to promote their website once the intial sale has been made. Virtually every time I purchase something on ebay from a top 50k seller that offers alot of products and generates alot of monthly sales on ebay, these same selers immediately after the sale encourage me to shop their websites to make future purchase and typically offer a 10-25 percent coupon to encourage me to shop their website.

Let's face it... manufacturers, mass merchandisers, online retailers and large volume sellers typically do have their own online website along with their own merchant checkout account. The average fees on a merchant account are typically 3-4 percent for credit cards. On ebay the fees associates with a sale is roughly 12 to 15%.depending on the item, plus an addition 3 percent paypal fee, a 30 cent transaction fee and an ebay listing fee. All thos fees really add up and cust into profit margins for these businesses, SO majority of them use ebay's platform as advertising mainly to drive more and more ebay shopper to their websites to make future sales and can typically offer a attractive buyer incentives to do so. It also enables these sellers to get their website URL alot of free exposure which avoids alot of search engine pay-per-click fees.

I believe over both the short term and long term ebay will regret making ebay marketplace a shopping portal almost exclusively dessigned for online retailers, wholesalers, manufacturer and other larger businesses and expect an ongoing downward trend in ebay user traffic which ultimately will also impact paypal revenues as well.

eBay in the Basement - But Not for Long

Fri, 17 Oct 2008 09:26:22 -0400

one thing I dont think you have factored into the equation is that most of the large business on ebay, that ebay is now catering to have their own websites...AND majority of these businesses are trying quite hard to entice their ebay buyers to shop their website once they've made the initial sale on ebay.

I dont think ebay has a clue just how much buyer traffic ebay loses to the same big companies they are trying so hard to cater to.

Virtually every time I make a purchase from one of the larger vendors on ebay whether it be for clothing, footwear, jewelry, gemstones, computers and hardware, electronics etc....the bigger ebay vendors always follow up with emails encouraging me to shop their websites NOT their ebay store and typically offer me a 10-25 percent discount on most purchases when I shop their website.

In my opinion that is the most significant reason GMV and buyer traffic on ebay is down as much as it is. Ebay is trying so hard to give alot of the large volume sellers alot of site exposure, and in turn a large percentage of the large volume sellers are taking advantage of ebay's selling platform to drive many buyers to their websites to avoid hefty ebay and paypal commssions and the headaches associated with many of ebay new policies.

Plus...as ebay has taken steps to reduce the number of sellers using many different techniques, literally 10s of 1000s of small businesses have started selling on other sales platforms or started their own websites which is and will continue to erode ebay's existing buyer traffic as more and more of these small business (bronze power seller types) inform their ebay customer base about their new site location.

Regardless of the economic situtation...expect to see buyer traffic at ebay marketplace to slowly but steadily continue to decline as more and more businesses of all sizes drive customers to their websites using ebays sales platform especially now that ebay is courting so more and more manufacturers that do have their own merchant accounts and would like to avoid ebay and paypal fees as much as possible.

eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 22:42:02 -0400

rctman,

You bring up a really valid point when you mentioned going directly to buy's website rather than purchasing something from them off ebay.

In my opinion the most significant reason buyer traffic has fallen off so drastically this year isnt so much the economy as it is the large companies ebay now is courting almost all have their own websites, and once they've made the intial sale on ebay...the vast majority of these big companies start emailing the buyer promoting their webstore...NOT their ebay store which is slowly eroding the number of shoppers going to ebay to shop.

I know from my own buying experiences on ebay that many of the large jewelry, gemstone, apparel & footwear, and electronic sellers immediately start emailing their ebay customers after the intial ebay sale and promote their websites often times offering special discounts to shop their website rather than their ebay store.

In my opinion, many of these big companies on ebay using ebay as a platform to drive online shoppers to their website is one of the biggest reasons buyer traffic has been steadily deteriorating on ebay in recent years.

Even the small businesses and grassroots casual sellers that have left ebay in large numbers and have either setup their own website or established roots on one or more lesser known sales venues are having an impact on ebay's existing buyer traffic. Let's face it, virtually all the alternative sites out there are growing rapidly....ie ecrater, ebid, Ioffer, OLA, bonanzle etc......and all the business minded sellers are contacting all their previous ebay customers encouraging them to check out their new storefront which has and will continue to further erode ebay's existing buyer traffic. Buyer traffic has been steadily rising on some of these sites in recent months while ebay's buyer traffic has been gradually weakening month after month.

Only time will tell if Donahoe's new business model for ebay will pay off, but I highly suspect that buyer traffic, GMV and overall loyalty of its members will continue to be eroded over both the short term and the long term especially since overall price of most merchandise on ebay is rising, the product selection off unique items is declining, and there is a ton of lame store inventory being listed in core now that most sellers would never put in core if they had to pay full price to list those items.

In my opinion, many of ebay's most loyal customer base are the same folks they are purposely driving off the site. And I feel someday ebay will regret forcing so many long time loyal advocates of ebay off the seller platform if for no other reason the the tremendous purchasng power the masses of small sellers have always brought to ebay collectively.

eBay: A glimmer of Hope for Feedback

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:17:26 -0400

correction to comment above...I meant to say J Donahue ISNT treating small volume sellers as valued customers.

For most of us....if we dont feel ebay treats us as a valued seller...we certainly wont shop their either.

eBay: A glimmer of Hope for Feedback

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 12:14:05 -0400

Yo Scot,

Maybe you should check with smaller volume sellers to...Most large volume sellers dont shop ebay much, and most of them have their own websites and promote their own website once they've made an initial ebay sale.
The smaller businesses and casual sellers on ebay that are being driven right off the site by ebay using DSRs, hide the listing tactics, witholding paypal payments and other dirty pool tactics to undermine small volume sellers has been causing literally 10s of 1000s if not millions of once avid community users that USED TO shop on ebay regularly vowing to never return as long as Donahue is in charge continuing to treat small volume sellers like they are a valuable customer.

Eba has no real clue just how many disgruntled small volume sellers are speaking ill of ebay both on the net in on their local communities, but the traffic reports at sites like quantcast.com speak for itself. Just in the past 4-5 months the volume of unique user traffic visiting ebay has dropped off 10 million. We little guys may not be imprtant to ebay's bottom line as far as our relatively small number of sales may be concerned....BUT the masses of small businessses and casual sellers being purposely driven off the site WERE also regular ebay shoppers and also avid cheerleaders for the site. As the masses of sellers being forced off the site continues to grow at a rapid rate, the masses of small volume sellers have a POWERFUL voice both on the net and in their local communities discouraging friends, family and aquaitances not to buy or sell on ebay.

Over time, I guarrantee the anger ebay has managed to instill in the vast majority of ebay's small volume seller customer base will have a huge impact on new membership growth as more and more ebay users speak ill of ebay and their experience/treatment.

Ebay is the one and only company our company has ever done business with that continues to treat us like we are not a valued cusotmer...AND we and many 1000s of other small businesses and small volume sellers are letting as many people as we can know just how poorly ebay treats it's customers.

Why eBay Needs Shipping Cap

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 11:42:18 -0400

ebay claims shipping caps are important for the buyer's satisfaction, YET if you look througg gemstone listings (high buyer volume) and alot of jewelry listings, you'll see that many sellers have standard shipping rates of anywhere from $7.50 to $20 to ship a one ounce gem, and majority of these asian based companies run exclusively 99 cent auctions or very low buy now prices with much of the total cost of product built into the s&h. Asian based companies selling gemstones, jewelry and many other types of merchandise have been dominating ebay US sales for years in many listing categories, and ebay says nothing about these large volume sellers charging ridiculous s&h rates on gemstones and other items that have large buyer volume.

Interesting how only media and electronic sellers are held to tight shipping caps, and how the trust and safety committe NEVER did or does anything about sellers charging exorbidant s&h rates in other categories even after being repeatedly reported.

It's also ironic that ebay claims they are trying so hard to clean up the site, yet the number of FAKE trademark items listed on the site is probably at an all time high. I'd venture to say 95% of the so-called licensed sporting apparel listing on the site is FAKE, as is the vast majority of Coach, A&F, Nike and many more famous trademark names being sold on ebay at a fraction of the cost of what legitimate retailers can buy real licensed and tradmark items for purchasing volume wholesale using legitimate wholesale supply chains.

Ebay doesnt care about buyer satisfaction or fairness to sellers....It's all about greed and their own bottom line and nothing more. All these smoke and mirror guestures that ebay cares about buyers and sellers is total nonsense. Not since J. Donahue took over anyway...Cash flow, profit margins and keeping their largest volume sellers content is all that dude cares about.

eBay: Bottom Is a Few Months Away

Fri, 10 Oct 2008 10:22:30 -0400

Ironically, virtually all the large companies ebay is now courting on the site ALSO have their own websites, and the vast majority of these large mass merchandisers that ebay is favoring in best match searches who are getting virtually all the expsoure on the site do in fact follow up with their ebay shoppers via email after the intial sale encouraging their ebay customer to shop make future purchases from the seller's website rather than their ebay store often times offering discount coupons and other incentives for the buyers to make future purchases from their websites. I know this...in the 6+ years as an ebay member, my wife and I made roughly 600 purchases, and 9-10 large vendors we purchased from immediately started sending us emails promoting their websites...NOT their ebay store.

Since Donahue has done virtually everything in his power to rid the site of auctions, casual sellers and small businesses as well as all the really unique, one of a kind type sellers favoring large volume sellers exclusively, fixed prices and free shipping only....it will be very interesting to see the massive decrease of buyer traffic going to ebay over the holidays and upcoming year.

Heck, in the 6 years I sold on ebay, I generated roughly 9000 sales, and at least 1/4 of those sales were from part time ebay sellers most of whom no longer buy or sell on ebay since J. Donahue has purposely undermined any and all small volume sellers.

Heck, even the large volume sellers are leaving at an alarming rate. According to sellerdome.com 35 out of the TOP 100 ebay sellers either no longer do business on ebay or at least have NOTHING listing on the site now. Pretty sad when just on a few short months Donahue and his posse of diruptive innovators have managed to drive off 35 percent of the largest sellers on the site. Based on my research studying sellerdome.com and poking through many of the individual sellers/businesses in top 100k nearly 45 percent of the top 100k sellers no longer have anything listed on ebay.

Ole J Donahue fails to realize that many of the 10s of 1000s of small businesses and the millions of casual sellers he's purpposely trying to drive off in tiers are also the same loyal community members that ONCE did a susbstantial ammount of shopping on ebay...many of whom are now doing their shopping at other sales venues or choosing to shop locally rather than feed the 800 lb greed monster. Not only have many community members CHOSEN to stop buy on ebay since J Donahue radically disputed the site, but those same folks are going back into their local communities speaking ill of ebay detering alot more folks from buying and selling on ebay.

As long as Donahue is in charge of ebay marketplace, I anticipate active memberships.

I think the average analyst doesnt even consider just how many of the large mass merchandisers on ebay merely use ebay as a platform to drive more and more ebay buyers to their websites once they've made the intial sale on ebay...so that they can avoid having to pay hefty ebay commisions and can use their own merchant account check out that more often than not is less costly than using paypal for every payment transaction. Heck, Our company was a small scale bronze power seller only doing about $4,500 worth of business on ebay monthly. But, now that we have our own website and storefronts on several lesser known auction sites, we've contacted been gradually contacting our 9000+ ebay customer base (at least 400 steady repeat customers) informing them of our new website and storefronts offering a 10% coupon any any purchases...our new store sales are steadily growing.
Multiply that out by the literally 1000 of other small businesses that are setting up a storefront off ebay and contacting all their previous ebay customers about their new online store...and that has and will continue to equate to a significant percentage of ebay's previous shopper base no longer shoping on ebay.

Ebay anticipated a small percentage of us small businesses would stop doing business on site. I dont think they ever envisioned just how many 1000s of small businesses would actually leave ebay and TAKE their customers with them.

Auctions arent a dying breed....Ebay is!