It Was Party Time Last Night

I am so over eBay. It has turned into one of those endless soap operas where the most unbelievable things happen every day, except this is real.

I still go to eBay, to check current pricing before buying elsewhere. It is getting much harder to find comparables with bids. Well, to be blunt, it is pretty hard to find anything on eBay these days.

There is a horrid fascination in tuning in for the next thrilling installment. I am sure it is not nearly as amusing for the poor sellers who are stuck like flies on corkscrew twist sticky paper pinned to the ceiling, buzzing angrily.

Six weeks ago I wrote an open letter to Lorrie Norrington in which I noted a report from Sellerdome that stated there was a 15% increase in the number of inactive registered sellers in the top 100,000 alone in the last month. I said "eBay is loosing good sellers like water through a colander." I got rubbished for that statement at Tamebay where Sue examined the statistics for the top 100,000 eBay sellers and concluded

There were some serious feedback issues going on amongst these sellers... we can’t claim that these sellers were any great loss to eBay: an average score of 95.2% is astonishingly poor for an eBay seller...

which missed my point! "eBay is loosing good sellers"

With 1.3 million sellers (Whitman) on eBay the top 100 thousand are less than 8% of the total. I was never one of the top 100K but I was a good seller with 100% feedback and lowest DSR of 4.6 for my outrageous S&H charges, which averaged $2.25. I am inactive.

This brings me to the 'party' last night. Sellers as far away from each other as West Hawaii to Tampa FL, Canada, PA, TN, CA, MN, IN, SC, and other places I forget were waiting for the 1000th registration on Bonanzle.com Together we welcomed a very startled gentleman from Everett WA at 1:26 AM EST. It was joyous, a community celebration.

80% of those Bonanzle registrations have joined since July 16th and the majority are off eBay. I do not personally know all those sellers, some may even be bad sellers! Any way you look at it, a lot of sellers moving off eBay onto one small but very promising venue.

In the last month Bonanzle which is still in beta, has moved in the Alexa ratings from a global 1,857,292 ranking on August 2nd to global 464,374 and US ranking 59,780 as of today.


Y'all come back!




Link: Bonanzle Blog

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