Divide and Conquer

One of the major effects of John Donohoe's disruptive innovation on eBay has been a polarization of eBay sellers. He used the divide and conquer tactic and for a while it worked. I wrote about it in early April as the first cycle of 'decreased and adjusted' billing completed.

In the days when eBay was a community, experienced sellers, many of them very high volume volunteered in the Answer Center and helped beginning sellers become good sellers. I know this because I was once one of those beginning sellers who was trained to do it right. I have always believed "What goes around comes around" that thought can also be found in the beautiful language of the King James Testament, Galatians 6:7 "..whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap". Years later when I actually knew what I was doing most of the time I too volunteered in the Answer Center.

That ended when eBay 'fixed a system that wasn't broke' with what, with 20/20 hindsight was a precursor of the Detailed Seller Rating system. The search function was 'weighted' to return threads that had been voted on as being helpful or not helpful. How do you think a slightly crooked seller would vote after being roundly told that his listing was in violation and business practices unacceptable?

Soon responders were registering 'posting IDs' to protect their eBay business from malicious buying just to give negative feedback. Both the good guys and the bad guys gamed the votes and eventually 'finding' was corrupted beyond redemption. If you are volunteering and the job is no longer rewarding the incentive is soon gone. Many of the good guys went away and eBay's customer service suffered.

Fast forward to October, six months after PowerSellers started eligibility for discounted Final Value Fees. Many smaller sellers left in May, they were the 'disgruntled noise'. Since then a trickle of sellers, business people who analyzed eBay and found it an increasingly unsustainable venue have quietly (for the most part) formulated an exit strategy, implemented it and gone.

The Brews News wrote twice this week on the subject, Thursday about the effects of lowered fees on their business and today about eBay's seller shrinkage and what the prognosis is for Q1-09. Insightful commentary and I recommend reading it.

What lessons can we learn from this experience? Please add your comments so we may all have food for thought.

Y'all come back!







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That Was The Week That Was

Top blog post for me this week was a 'shock and awe experience' at Genuine Seller which opened my eyes to the eBay disruptive innovation program. I kinda hate to expose my ignorance but seriously, I always thought that was a joke, urban legend, a sick joke but a joke. For this JohnDo is paid millions in salary and stock options?

Runner-UpThe Brews News on seller motivation. Pay close attention to paragraph 2, Margins.

Oh My Gosh! post award would be Sue Bailey's Tamebay post today. Tamebay is generally regarded as pro-eBay and is always informative, so I sincerely hope someone in a position of power at eBay reads this.

Perennial Favorite, the GOOD John - ColderICE of 3rd Power Outlet who dispenses a rich blend of commentary, opinion and plain e-commerce sense with humor on video. This one on DSRs.

Retro Current. This is actually 'That Was The Year That Was', 2006, the single incident that switched on the light and led to my learning to build a functioning website and begin implementing an exit strategy from eBay. This archived blog post from Blogio, the Vendio blog.

The latest eBay UK scandal, which would appear to step right over the bait and switch line, is covered on the Buildaskill Biz Blog.

Also Ran eBayINKblog is full of the exciting NEW Oh! Wait a minute, maybe its not new, ummm, the exciting resurrected Ad Marketplace keywords Pay Per Click program. Ads will appear "near the bottom of the page when a buyer searches for a particular keyword or is browsing in a particular category". This will be a deeply satisfying income stream for eBay as competitors gleefully click each others ads. Didn't work before, will it work this time around?

Enjoy and have a good weekend. Y'all come back!







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