

EBay Losing Traffic To Amazon After Strategy Shift - monkeybusiness
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/07/10/ebays-traffic-drops-amid-identity-crisis/?src=twr

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bradgessler
eBay's mantra should be, "make it easy to buy, sell, and trade shit".
Unfortunately they lost sight of that a long time ago when they were trying to
hard to woo bigger sellers with "Buy it Now" and all the other professional
features they built into eBay. Their vision was too vague and looked more
like, "build a big, online marketplace". Unfortunately for eBay, Amazon
started with this vision and executed it much better.

I don't use eBay anymore because its hard to list an item and deal with all
the emails about it. Instead, I buy stuff on Amazon much easier at about the
same price without all the aggravation of bidding. If I want to sell
something, like a book, I can list it on Amazon and sell it without answering
a billion emails and typing up a big description.

Amazon is kicking eBay's ass.

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ShabbyDoo
I was at a party a couple of weeks ago, and the subject of eBay came up. The
people there were all 30-something professionals, and none had ever bought or
sold anything on eBay! Few even bought stuff online. These people are my
friends, and I had just presumed that their buying habits were like mine. As I
stood in front of them with my mouth open, they asked, "What kind of stuff do
you buy on eBay?" in a gee-wiz sort of way.

We at HN are not at all representative of Americans. Everyone in that room had
at least one college degree, and the average earnings were probably $100K.
Even then, they weren't buying online.

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AlisdairO
It baffles me that eBay is trying to kill its own core competency: connecting
people with unusual stuff to sell with people who have unusual things that
they want. Auction fees are ludicrously high, and the process is increasingly
hostile (and expensive) to small time sellers.

I understand that they want to expand their market into new goods, but given
that they have vast competition in that area, why hurt the revenue stream that
they had a virtual lock on?

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frossie
_Auction fees are ludicrously high, and the process is increasingly hostile
(and expensive) to small time sellers._

Indeed. Isn't it ironic that eBay used to be a community of people (many of
which were buying and selling at the same time) and just as social media
started ascending, eBay moved in exactly the opposite direction - towards a
warehouse model that pissed off the little people who were selling things to
clear out their attics.

I am so annoyed at them that I have literally given stuff away rather than
sell it on eBay. Right now as a retail site, they are a dead man walking, no
matter what their uniques and cash-flow is. I can't see Ebay lasting another 3
years in its current model.

On the plus site, etsy.com seems to have done a great job picking at least one
niche of the old eBay market (handmade goods).

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webnrrd2k
I agree -- Craigslist is far easier, and suits me much better. generally I
don't even have to mess with shipping, but can just drive over and pick
something up or have them drop by.

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vaksel
its all about $$$.

eBay used to save you a crapload over other web stores. Now the difference is
so tiny, that there is no reason to take the risk with eBay

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potatolicious
On the contrary, I think it's all about eBay has long been a market for new
goods, instead of the used stuff that the original idea was based off of.
Auctions just aren't a very good means to sell new goods.

Go search for any product you like on eBay - the overwhelming majority of the
results are new items, from large-scale eBay dealers, using the Buy-it-now
feature instead of real auctioning.

In this case eBay has simply become another webstore - and Amazon has had
third-party sellers for quite some time also. As a _webstore_ , Amazon's brand
name is considerably more powerful than eBay. Not to mention Amazon takes
payment on your behalf as a trusted entity - which is more than can be said
for the money order and PayPal-based payment system of eBay.

Oh, also, so many eBay listings lowball the selling price and then destroy you
on shipping. This is the primary reason why I stopped using the service - it
was too much work having to figure out exactly how much it would cost to get
it shipped to me. Amazon third-party sellers are locked to certain shipping
rates.

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webnrrd2k
Even as a web store eBay sucks -- it's hard to search for something and not
get swamped in accessories/manuals/related junk for an item.

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proee
Question: If you pooled together a ton of people through some social
networking, etc (say 1k people per each state across the US), and got these
people to commit to selling their "junk" on a new service for say 1-year,
would this be enough of a critical mass to get the ball rolling in terms of
creating a real competitor to ebay?

You could start a grass roots movment and have people sign an online petition
that says they will boycott ebay and use your service instead. There's enough
people that are tired of ebay's overpriced fees that they would probably sign
the petition and create some internet awareness.

Is this crazy talk?

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elai
Facebook has their marketplace, but to be honest, craigslist is better traffic
wise than that.

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tocomment
Where do you guys sell your old stuff online? E.g., old laptop you don't need,
old GPS navigation when you get a new one, etc?

Ebay is too much hassle, and afaik Craigslist is only local. Any ideas?

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dickwad
Amazon, if you close your eyes and ignore the egregious fees. You'll still
probably get more money than Craigslist and less danger/hassle than Ebay.

~~~
tocomment
Can you sell things on Amazon that they don't sell? E.g., a five year old GPS?

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BOOKLOVER27
Ebay lost sight years ago...first with greedy fees, commisions and other
pricey features. If they had followed the route necessary to maintain an
honest and even keeled market for both sellers and buyers they would be
enourmous. It happens so often that corportate greed and shortsightedness does
them in. Ebay is no different. Also, Amazon.com is on its way to the same
corporate debacle hurting both buyers and sellers with higher fees and
controlling the shipping charges. WE NEED A TRUE FREE INTERNET MARKET...

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proee
I've always thought it would be a grand adventure to try to create a startup
that could take over ebay. I was hoping Google would come up with a better
model and put them out of their misery but I don't think that's going to
happen.

Does anyone know if any up-and-coming startups that are trying to take ebay's
market? I'd be glad to support them.

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emzo
Even though I criticized them in another comment on this very thred, hell,
maybe this stretagy is working better for them? Of course we as intelligent
free-thinking HN readers might not agree with their curret strategy, but if
it's making you megabucks, would you actually care?

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quellhorst
Meg Whitman bailed out on a ship she caused to start sinking.

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dickwad
two words: PayPal lol

Ebay was so awesome when it was the wild wild west and you had to actually
email back and forth with buyers and sellers to establish a repoire before you
trusted them. It baffles me that a smaller auction company has never really
risen from Ebay's apparent ashes. I really had my money on Gbay for a while...

Between Ebay, Craigslist and Amazon (who charges say a 15% fee to sell video
games), I'll get the most money in my pocket selling on Amazon and that is
bullshit.

