It’s about time for eBay to reveal its fourth quarter income, revenues and all that to investors, and no one is expecting anything but bad news. The company’s revenue, despite increasing competition from every angle, has grown for ten years straight, but it looks like that simply wasn’t sustainable lately, and they’re going to post a decline in income. eBay is philosophical about it, however, and knew that it was coming, so hopefully their investors are prepared (or have left already).
This last year has been eBay dealing with the fact that it may have essentially peaked in usage, or at least gotten as big as it’s going to get for now without major changes. The number of actual items sold has dropped year-over-year by as much as 10%, which is a big hit.
The cognitive scientist in me says that in times of scarcity, people are more likely to go with the sure thing — in etailers that would be Amazon — and avoid the “gamble,” which is eBay. It’s unpredictable by nature, even if it’s all according to a system. eBay will get their groove back, but keeping expectations low is probably a good idea.
eBay started nickle and diming people for everything and the items are not able to be sold for what they used to be.
Having previously been a pretty avid ebayer I only stopped selling things there because I would rather keep them forever than give them away for next to nothing.
That’s exactly where I’m at. It used to be if I could sell for $10 bucks on an item I’d toss it up, but now, unless it’s $50, it’s just not worth it to me.
eBay’s problems are self inflicted. The more eBay has done in the
name of bringing business back to their site, the more they have
alienated current users that were once infatuated with the market place as both buyers and sellers.
eBay started to seriously slide when John Donahoe as CEO came out in front of changes which gutted the core of the marketplace and referred to any member that spoke out against the changes as ‘noise’. His arrogant ‘noise’ label insulted the very customers he was trying to keep.
Led by an executive team that has barely used the marketplace, eBay is now headed for obscurity because they do not ‘get’ it anymore.
eBay, unlike Amazon, does not own inventory, and relies on sellers to provide merchandise to the site. This said, it is hard to understand why eBay executives have instituted so many anti seller policies over the past year.
Further proof of how out of sync eBay leadership is, they fail to understand that sellers are buyers as well. Alienating sellers diminishes their interest in purchasing from the site or doing
business in any way with a company that is viewed as seller unfriendly.
eBay’s increased fees across the board and forcing sellers to accept PayPal to entitle them to an even larger slice of sellers profits, has not improved the company’s fortunes, but has motivated sellers to take their business elsewhere to avoid the perceived greed.
eBay has become a ship without a rudder, adrift in a marketplace they have lost control of.
eBay execs fail to understand that word of mouth is essential to the success of their marketplace. With sellers having nothing positive to say, buyers are going elsewhere.
Until eBay is led by a team of executives with vision and experience in what makes eBay tick, eBay is destined to become the next Internet
bubble to burst.
Buyers and sellers alike have lost trust and confidence in current leadership over the series of poorly implemented policies, feedback
changes, imposition of the failed DSR system, constant technical glitches, search that is horrible, forced PayPal etc…
eBay is now beyond reversing failed policy and system changes. eBay now has to replace the entire core of enthusiastic members which they
have managed to chase in addition to changing the failed policies and defective systems. This will be hard for them to do, as former eBay members having been treated so poorly will be most unlikely to return.
The simplest solution would be for eBay to simply get out of being in the marketplace business since it is obvious current executive leadership has no clue as to what it takes to make and keep the eBay marketplace relevant, vibrant and successful.
John Donahoe, Lorrie Norrington and company will go down in history as the executives that managed to screw up a free lunch.
They are not the team that will lead eBay out of the disaster they created, they are the team that turned a marketplace with millions of happy members into a poor imitation of its competition with customers who have nothing good to say about the new experience.
This is unlikely to change until the book smart MBA’s are removed, and replaced by a team of executives that know and understand what the
eBay marketplace is.
The fix would be for Mr Omidayr or someone experienced with the original eBay concepts to get back to work, and restore the core principles upon which eBay was founded. Omidayr had the right ideas and the company became a worldwide multi billion dollar success under those founding principles, policies and concepts. It will only restore itself to that level of success when the existing leadership is tossed and replaced with a
team that ‘gets’ eBay.
“The facilitating of fraud by eBay”
http://www.auctionbytes.com/forum/phpBB/viewtopic.php?t=23585
The link to a revised draft of my submission to government regarding eBay’s facilitating of “shill bidding” by the application of the absolutely anonymous bidding alias (ie, “Bidder N”) in Australia, U.K., Ireland and the Philippines:
The writing has been on the wall for some time. Seller’s need to look for other venues and diversify. One of the places I’m selling at is Bonanzle. This is one of the bright spots that has come from ebay’s implosion.
I don’t have to pay any fees for listing my items there and only a very small fee once items sell. I receive a lot of traffic to my booth from Google search because you can submit your booth items to Google Base.
It’s fast and simple to open up a booth and list your items.
Former Powerseller. What eBay needs to do. Solution 1. Paypal to introduce a simply Amazon style payments. To explain for those of you that don’t know Amazon payment service for third party sellers is only transferable to your bank account, one direction; you can’t use the money in there to buy anything online ,the money can only flow to your bank account there is less chance for fraud. Having listened to PayPal employees on complexity of the PayPal system i.e. money flowing in all possible directions etc… A one directional PayPal would offer the eBay seller a more secure payment system. Even if your account is hijacked money can only be transferred to your bank account in the same country you have you card in. The point is PayPal would have less excuse to shut down accounts and the sellers could get on with doing business. Less stoppage = more fees we pay eBay.
As for eBay stock wait to the price hits $5 then buy it. EBay is improving the site these changes are painful but needed. It would seem Donohue is not without survival instinct. The eBay policy team is taking into consideration sellers concerns and changing policy in the light of unforeseen issues that are now coming to light. I expect to see growth return in Q4 2010
As a TEN-YEAR POWERSELLER with a great rating and NO suspensions, ever, I would like to say this:
When eBay started, it was a real Godsend.
Small stores could compete on a level field with the big guys. Free-Market America.
Buyers and sellers could rate each other publicly to keep it safe. (not the make-believe-feedback of today)
My years on eBay have allowed me to raise my kids myself. MY business fed the kids. MY business kept the lights on, and food on the table.
With MY business and MY hard work, I was one of the many thousands who built eBay into the huge success it was, up until the Animal-House Lunacy of several months ago.
My ten year job vanished overnight. I closed my store because it was no longer safe or profitable.
Do I get a gold watch?
Do I get any “Thank You”?
No. I get a “bend over and take it” response from the new eBay.
“Lay down and die” they tell me.
I would like to find out which competitor managed to place an inside saboteur so high up in eBay management with orders to sink the ship.
Let’s see how it’s done–
First- Brag to the press that your billion dollar “flea market” success is an embarrassment to you because it looks too much like a flea market. (duh!?)
2. Make sure that your reason for success (mom and pop flea markets on a level playing field) will morph into something that doesn’t resemble at all what made it successful in the first place.
3. Create a deep anger and resentment in your customers (the sellers) that can’t be calmed or erased.
4. Welcome and protect the shoplifters and vandals, then invite more to arrive to help you teach the sellers a real lesson.
5. Announce to all, very publicly that your customers, the shopkeepers, are the real villians that must be dealt with and sanctioned.
6. Deliberately change the “community” of buyers and sellers working out mutually beneficial agreements into one of being bitter adversaries who must fight and argue to in order to get a “fair” deal.
7. Start a BIG BROTHER eavesdropping campaign on all correspondence, and actively encourage every neighbor to turn in other neighbors for speaking.
8. Encourage people to throw rocks at others anonymously.
9. Hand each new adversary nice, new, baseball bats and tell them they are enemies.
10. Tell sellers that they MUST ship expensive merchandise without getting paid, and then be forced to loan their paychecks to PayPal interest-free.
The new management has done each and every one of these while gloating and loudly bragging about each one.
There can be NO WAY this was accidental. No one on earth can be so stupid and foolish enough to do this by accident.
These guys have been urinating in their own food supply and other people’s food supply and then have been loudly bragging about the great new taste.
Does anyone like the new ” eBay taste” ?
The urge to kill and eat the golden goose was just too much for these people.
I think someone WANTED to see it burn.
Like many thousands of others, I have all the affection for eBay that I would for any business partner who ran off to Hawaii with the bank account.
Signed- TEN YEAR POWERSELLER