eBay: Not Wanted Dead or Alive

First day of eBay Live 2007 is over and the big question is "Is eBay still Alive?"

A great picture of the seething crowds from RBH at eBayinkblog

Some rumblings from the eBay annual shareholders meeting this morning which was held in a safe bunker some distance away from the mobs of disgruntled sellers.

There were several questions from shareholders about the value of eBay's shares, and CFO Bob Swan said the company believes the shares are undervalued. Another shareholder asked whether eBay had considered issuing dividends, the answer was no. eBay closed today at $29.17.

President and CEO John Donahoe said "Our role is to enable the marketplace, we are the custodians and stewards"

Good coverage from Richard Brewer-Hay here

Scott Wingo, eGuru extrordinaire and Chief Whiz at ChannelAdvisor had a hysterically funny post on this year's eBay Live theme "eBay Heroes".

Skip McGrath, long time eBay cheerleader and author of many how to eBay books, thought attendance was way down this year. On his blog he shares this insightful thought (don't bother commenting he has not moderated a comment in months)

What I think has happened here is that so many sellers have been turned off by the new policies they just didn’t care. Basically eBay has a PR problem and it’s not with the general public –it is with the community.

Hmmm. Skip missed out on a great career as a diplomat.


Sue Bailey from Tamebay also estimates attendance at 5000 and notes many vendors just did not show up.

Sellers I’ve talked to today have been generally unhappy at the level that courses have been pitched at: “too basic” is a constant theme. There’s one stream just for beginner sellers, and another “Beyond the Basics”, as well as classes for PowerSellers and more on growing your business: all of these have been complained about as being too easy, and way below the level required. “I think I should be teaching them,” said one seller who had left *two* classes in the first session as being just too basic for his needs.

There is a clue there folks! eBay thinks we are so stupid they need to step in and manage our businesses to take care of "their buyers" but they are trying hard to edjimakate us.

One of my favorite bloggers and all around nice guy Randy Smythe was there and said

I've talked to quite a few large sellers and the general consensus is "we've moved on" For some eBay has become a liquidation channel for others it is now the smallest part of their business.

I have saved the best for last, Ina Steiner and her Auctionbytes team have been blogging all day, providing up to the minute commentary and reporting, a SUPERB job!

From the Improving Your Visibility in Best Match Search Results session with Lynda Talgo and Jeff King of eBay:

"By removing the mutual feedback removal, what is the incentive for the seller to fix the problem?"

Talgo replied that when mutual fb removal went bye-bye, for "most sellers nothing changed, and for "a few" their feedback dropped 5-8-10%, because they were creating so many bad experiences" [relying on mutual feedback removal to solve problems].

"all sellers are faced with the same situation ... focus on the info you do have...and if you get the random wacko buyer, that's it."

So now you know, and this random whacko ex-seller says ...


Y'all come back