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Wednesday Report Analysis
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Welcome to The Wednesday Report. Orignially, this weekly journal was published on the web from 2000-2001 (I think) and covered various aspects of the online auction and e-commerce business. One of the most popular features was "auction counts" for eBay and many other sites. With recent changes in the onine landscape, especially on eBay, I've decided to resurrect The Wednesday Report with current eBay counts. I'll be adding more, such as my proprietary Misery News Index in the near future.
Thanks, 6/18/08: Inflation Still #1 Concern in Misery News 6/11/08: Inflation, Unemployment Elevate Misery News Index 6/4/08: Misery News Index Still Elevated, But Off Recent High 5/28/08: Inflation, Unemployment, Homeless Push Misery News Index to Highest Ever Level
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Auction Counts Drop for Second Straight Week View actual Auction Counts Analysis In the absence of special promotions or listing discounts, auctions running on eBay's core US site fell for the second consecutive week. Though it's far too early to call it a trend, the number of listings are now down a whopping 918,417 since our renewed counts began on May 22nd, just weeks into the institution of eBay's new feedback policies which allow buyers to leave positive, neutral or negative feedback for sellers, but only allow sellers to leave positives. While that change has angered and agitated more than a few sellers, it would appear that the bulk of merchants on eBay have remained, though there are many anecdotal reports of departures, and even more mention of lowering the number of items listed. That eBay raised fees back in February has many sellers seeking other venues or operating their own web stores or sites, freeing them from at least some of the cost of listing on eBay. In the current week, twenty-one of thirty-four categories suffered declines in the number of items for sale. Of the thirteen showing gains, the largest was in Cell Phones & PDAs, which increased by 22,688. After that, only Computers & Networking had an increase of more than 10,000, increasing by 10,304. Eight categories grew by less than 1000 listings. By contrast, of the categories registering listing drops, two-thirds (14 of 21) witnessed declines of 3,000 or more. The greatest fall-offs were in Clothing, Shoes & Accessories (-28,248), Collectibles (-23,983) and Toys & Hobbies (-21,367). Notable declines were also found in Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop (-14,600), Books (-13,472) and Music (-11,195). Listings on eBay Motors, of which many may run for as long as 21 days, continued to decline, losing another 4,333 on the week. Since May 22nd, listings on eBay Motors are off 127,888, a drop of nearly 10%. eBay has not responded well to a rash of complaints from sellers ranging from unfair buyer feedback to a spike in NPBs (Non Paying Bidders), choosing rather to remain relatively silent and stubborn about making life more difficult for the bulk of small merchants which drives much of their business. Of course, eBay can always fall back on larger retailers, such as Buy.com, which recently inked a deal with eBay to offer roughly 1/2 million items for sale on the site. As of Wednesday morning, the five largest sellers on eBay, their usernames and number of items listed, are:
Together, these five sellers account for a total of 1,705,402 listings on eBay, or 14% of total US listings. Interested parties can check the number of auctions by these largest sellers by using eBay's Advanced Search. With eBay Live! set to open on Thursday, June 19, and run through Saturday, June 21 in Chicago, expect more than a few reports of disgruntled sellers making their voices heard at the event.
Rick Gagliano
The Wednesday Report is a wholly-owned property of Downtown Magazine. Copyright 2008. All rights reserved. All figures, numbers and/or data are derived from real sources, raw numbers, supplied by the representative web sites, entities or searches. The Wednesday Report and Downtown Magazine take no responsibility for errors or omissions, though every effort is made to report facts and figures accurately. Caveat Emptor. Per aspera ad astra. |
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