I used to get considerably more views for my auctions, and most of them would get at least 20 views over a week’s time. Now I’m getting just a few views for many of them. Is Ebay buying on a downturn, or is this just due to Ebay no longer charging listing fees so there’s a glut of listings? I don’t think it’s a seasonal thing because buying usually starts to pick up around September when the summer ends and people start spending more time indoors.
That may have something to do with it, but the two things that really ruined eBay for me are Buy It Now and the ability to set up eBay “stores”. I can’t speak for everyone, but I rarely go to eBay anymore because it seems to be overrun with wannabe entrepreneurs trying to sell used stuff for almost the same price as new, sometimes even higher.
I haven’t sold anything in a while, but it seems like there has been a massive decrease in casual sellers.
That is, everything is Ebay “stores” or professional sellers / pawn shops etc.
I can’t complain as I’ve made some pretty good money recently, but only because I was offering some high end items. A lot of the stuff out there is blah, me too type stuff. The one thing I haven’t been able to turn recently is a brand new Wagner power sprayer, there are tons of listings for these things now from numerous “stores”. Some of these stores are nothing more than people picking up something at Odd Lots or a yard sale and posting it on eBay; others are merely windows for pawn shops. So there is glut for junk and commodity items; but if you are selling Nikon cameras or Bose stuff the people still beat a path to your auction.
If the “stores” aren’t a good deal for buyers, shouldn’t that make it easy for casual sellers to undercut them?
On low end items no. If you are selling something at $30 or less there isn’t much profit to be made on something you paid $15 for after you take into account eBay fees, PayPal fees and your time to post it and ship it. That and people are starting to expect free shipping on everything. I’ve lost money on shipping because the eBay calculators said one thing when I posted the item and the post office said another thing when I actually got it down there because I had to over pack the item to ensure it got there safe. The businesses and pawn shops are set up better to ship items than an individual.
As a Canadian whose bought on both the Canadian and American eBay sites and sold on the Canadian one, high shipping fees have made eBay all but pointless for me. As a buyer, unless someone is shipping from China or Taiwan, the shipping fees often more than double the price of whatever I’m trying to buy. (For example, I’ve seen American sellers try to charge $10 to ship a $2 piece of costume jewelry, and $25 to ship a $15 bottle of perfume.) Selling would also be ridiculous: Small packages from Canada to the US cost a minimum of $10 and can cost even more within Canada! Unless you’ve got a business account and can take advantage of bulk rates, it’s very hard to make a profit anymore.
The decision eBay made to drop the asterisk wildcard search has turned off many buyers because you can’t narrow down searches to find specific items anymore. Who ever heard of any computer system not having a wildcard and eBay foisted this piece of crap on the public. If I search for advertising items from Chicago during the 1800’s my search was: adv* chi* 18* which right now returns 0 items. If I search for advertising chicago 1885 I get four hits. Does eBay expect me to go through every variety of adv advert advertisment advertising plus every variety of Chicago abbreviation and every year from 1800 to 1899 one year at a time? How is this an improvement?
They probably expect you to work your way down through categories. The problem with that is that it relies on all the sellers ticking all the boxes accurately.
Many things I didn’t consider have been mentioned. Is there any hard data on Ebay sales and buyer metrics?
Craigslist happened.
It is much easier to buy or sell used things on craigslist. Ebay is really more of a marketplace now.
I’ve drastically slowed down my buying on eBay for many reasons. First, as mentioned, a lot of sellers are businesses, not private parties. Second, sometimes it’s really hard to get the search engine to work properly. The categories are frequently misused, too. Third, I don’t like the fact that eBay and PayPal are bestest buds now. Fourth, I think that a lot of the smaller, more casual sellers have been driven away by eBay’s policies which tip the scales towards the buyers too much…and I say that as someone who is a buyer, not a seller.
This is because the listing fees are normally waived. Without a listing fee, sellers have nothing to lose by asking top dollar. This creates a lot of useless listings that I seldom wade through any more. Maybe I should sell the stock short.
I can’t say I’ve noticed any huge change. I’ve occasionally bought jeans through eBay over the years, because the ones I like aren’t made by the manufacturer anymore, and even the ones purportedly new with tags are a great deal cheaper than they would have been in the store. Obviously there’s the possibility of counterfeiting, but I honestly can’t see any difference between my eBay jeans and my store-bought ones. Good jeans basically last forever, provided you don’t wear them while performing in a rodeo or participating in rough sports. I don’t have any experience with other types of clothing on eBay.
OTOH when it comes to collectible objects I do see a great deal of offerings that expire after 30 days because nobody offered the reserve.
As a buyer since 1999, I think there’s just too many items on eBay. Used to be that for me, the hunt was part of the fun of getting the item. Stalking the out of print book, the VSH copy of Quadrophenia. Now everything is available everywhere and there’s too much of it. I used to buy a lot of my work clothes on eBay. Now I have to sift through 20 pages of stuff just to find a skirt or two. And I think the expectation of new buyers is that prices should be rock bottom, and shipping certainly should be free. eBay definitely favors the big sellers with stores.
I’ve brought quite a bit out of China lately with zero shipping their incredible bargains however as a seller I’m looking at ten dollars postage on a five dollar item, its just not worth the trouble trying to compete…
Really? I’ve bought and sold on both Craigslist and eBay, and I find it MUCH easier to deal with eBay for either transaction. Primarily because I never have to interact directly with the other party, and payment is all electronic. Craigslist buyers and sellers flake out all the time, are hard to schedule meetups with to do the exchange, etc. At this point the only thing I’m willing to deal with Craigslist for is stuff that’s hard to ship (furniture, cars, etc.). Even then, I’m willing to pay more (or sell for less) to avoid the hassle most of the time.
That said, I don’t really use eBay anymore either. I used to be a huge eBay user (mostly as a buyer, but I’ve sold probably about 100 things as well), but I literally haven’t used the site in at least two years. Part of it is that I just lost patience. But I also found that the quality of listings was going down and the site was getting harder to use. These days I just buy stuff from Amazon, or or if it’s something obscure, sometimes I’ll go on a site just for enthusiasts of that thing, and often there’s a buying and selling section. Generally the sellers there are much nicer to deal with than a random eBay (or especially Craigslist) seller.
I agree.
Personally, I used to buy a lot of stuff on ebay, but now Craigslist is where I start.
Reasons:
- the hassles of dealing with ebay’s ‘search’ engine
- the many mis-categorized items
- overpriced ‘shipping & handling’ fees (often annoyingly semi-hidden)
and a big one, not mentioned so far: - crooked sellers, with fakes or counterfeits or never-shipped merchandise.
With Craigslist, I get a to see & feel the item before I pay for it, and can walk away if it isn’t as advertised.
I’ve lost far more money to crooked ebay sellers than the gas I’ve wasted on non-shows or already-gone Craigslist items.
I’ve been watching ebay for a couple of weeks and things are selling left and right. I’m mainly tracking silver, gold, and watches. I just searched for “18k Gold Watch -Rolex” and leafed through the first like 100 items and all had over 10 bids (sorted by most bids.) Every gold and silver item I tracked in coins and bullion has sold, from silver eagles to junk gold jewelry lots to gold watches.
I’m checking the fees and the only way I can see sellers making a profit on these is that they are buying them at less than 80% of spot. (6-9% ebay commission, 3% paypal, $3 registered mail, I don’t know about USPS insurance.) So far, I don’t see any way an average person can get below spot prices, but these guys must have something, most likely one of those “We buy Gold!” type businesses.
I make money hobby selling on ebay but only because I buy high quality retail closeout and overstock items at 60-70% off retail and sell them for 40-50% of retail. Between listing fees, selling fees, and paypal fees the cost to sell is typically around 13-15% of the transaction cost. I’m lucky to clear 15-20% profit and that doesn’t include the cost of processing returns or what I will have to pay in taxes to the IRS or the fact that half my house has become (effectively) a merchandise warehouse. Ebay/Paypal user incomes over $ 20,000 annually automatically get reported to the IRS.
I don’t think it’s so much that there are fewer causal buyers, I get plenty of sales, it’s just that with the fees it’s not worth the hassle for nickel and dime sellers so they have fallen out.