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Wednesday Report Analysis Archive

The Wednesday Report Misery News Index

eBay Sellers Irate, Listings Slip Again Analysis For the second time in three weeks, listings on eBay's core US site fell, dropping to their lowest level since the Wednesday Report was reconstituted in late May. Checking in at 15,093,549 current listings as of Wednesday morning (6/11), the figure represents a 1.1% decline from the previous week. The current reading also helps explain the dramatic drop of 5/28, which can now be seen in a context of an overall descending pattern rather than a one-time holiday-related event. Establishing a root cause for eBay's degenerating fortunes is not difficult. Since John Donahoe took over as CEO, his "disruptive thinking" formula has done more harm than good. Fee increases and a new, unbalanced feedback system which favors buyers and leaves sellers with little to no recourse against undeserved negatives, have caused widespread dissatisfaction among once-loyal eBay merchants. Some prescient analysis is presented in this blog posting by Scot Wingo, from the 2008 Internet Retailer Conference and Exhibition (IRCE) in Chicago. Wingo points out why sellers are upset with the feedback changes and predicts that "...eBay Live is going to be a really rough event next week." The annual confab of all things eBay is also set to take place in Chicago and somewhat fittingly, it has already been announced that the '09 event has been canceled. Once again, CEO Donahoe, as part of his disruptive strategy, is focusing on getting more "up close and personal" through 2009, though many eBay followers are already predicting that the 2010 event, scheduled for August 12-14 in Orlando, Florida, will also be canceled, or, if held, will only slightly resemble the eBay Live gatherings of the past. As for the listings, of the 34 main categories, only six showed gains over the past week - Baby, Health & Beauty, Jewelry & Watches, Musical Instruments, Real Estate, and Video Games - though the total gains were only roughly 10,000 listings. Those spare gains were nothing compared to the declines in other categories. In total, there was a decline of 163,471 listings from the previous week. Hardest hit were Clothing, Shoes & Accessories (-29,047), Collectibles (-13,382), Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop (-11,923) and Toys & Hobbies (-10,969). eBay Motors experienced an overall decline of 8,110. Investors are also beginning to suspect that everything's not all fine and dandy at the world's largest auction site. Just before noon on June 11, eBay stock slipped to 27.93, a three-month low. Shares of eBay had sunk as low as 25.10 back in March, 2008. The stock has lost more than 4 points in just the last four weeks, a decline of 12.5%. With eBay Live commencing next week and the second quarter coming to an end soon thereafter, it will be interesting to see if eBay offers any kind of listing incentive to boost activity on the site. They generally have been running a special of some kind on a monthly basis, though last month's promotion - 15% off Final Value Fees if free shipping was offered - was quickly dissected by astute sellers, determined to be of benefit only to eBay and not well-received. Elsewhere, technicians at OnlineAuction.com are internally testing a new site design, set to roll out live by the middle or end of June. The site is becoming one of the more popular alternatives to eBay's high fees and restrictive policies. Offering seller accounts with unlimited listings for a mere $8.00 per month with no final value or other fees, many cost-conscious merchants are making the switch. The site, founded by former Power Seller Chris Fain, is owned and operated by a privately-held company in Grants Pass, Oregon, and currently boasts more than 14 million listings. Rick Gagliano June 11, 2008 eBay Listings Rebound in First Week of June Analysis While it's still too early to draw any distinct conclusions, the number of listings on eBay's core US site were up week-over-week for the first week of June. Sellers may still be in an uproar over recent fee increases and changes to the feedback system, but they apparently still find eBay to be the most effective venue for selling goods. Anecdotal reports of sellers "leaving in droves" and "finding friendlier venues" still proliferate on message boards and across the internet, but hard evidence is scant. The major increases came from a variety of categories, but the largest gains came in Clothing, Shoes & Accessories (+18,692), Computers & Networking (+7,235), Pottery & Glass (+9,407), Toys & Hobbies (+12,737) and Everything Else (+11,424). These were partially offset by declines in Art (-11,696), Coins & Paper Money (-14,719), DVDs & Movies (-15,891) and Sports Memorabilia, Cards & Fan Shop (-14,330). The big winner by far was eBay Motors which experienced gains in listings of 51,811. Listings in the Books category were down marginally, as were - oddly - Travel listings, a seasonal category. The other seasonal category of Home & Garden was up by nearly 8,000 Listings from one major concern, Buy.com, dipped from 530,782 to 521469 in the current week. Most of the chatter on message boards continues to center around feedback, following eBay's recent change to disallow neutral or negative comments to be left by sellers for buyers. The vast majority of sellers feel this is as one-sided as it sounds, and there have even been reports of feedback extortion, such as the story told by AuctionBytes' Ina Steiner on her blog, in, Sopranos Meets eBay in Feedback Extortion Scheme BusinessWeek also chimed in, declaring the death of online auctions, from the lips of eBay CEO John Donahoe and former auction seller Bruce Hershenson, who moved his popular movie poster business from eBay to his own site, eMoviePoster.com. With listings seemingly in a state of flux amid the sellers' controlled rage, the jury is still out on eBay and the fat lady has yet to sing. Rick Gagliano June 4, 2008 eBay Listings Off 4.67% in Latest Week Analysis It may be only a factor of the short Memorial Day holiday week or a purely seasonal fluctuation, but auction listings on eBay's US site were down nearly 5% over the previous reading. The growling from sellers who have been irritated by recent changes to the feedback system may also have played a part in the recent decline, though it's too early to tell if sellers are leaving the site in droves or merely cutting down on the number of listings as warmer weather reaches the northern parts of the country. Historical data indicates that a decline in the number of listings at the end of May is a normal occurrence, so analysts should reserve judgment on the affect of eBay's radical feedback departure, which allows sellers to leave only positive feedback for buyers, whether the selling experience was positive or not. Buyers, on the other hand, are still allowed to leave negative feedback for sellers, though with the new changes, eBay advises, they have no fear of retaliatory feedback from their sellers. Making life more difficult for sellers are eBay's rules regarding neutral feedback, which is now treated as a negative when figuring the seller's feedback rating. Neutrals and negatives from the past year are now counted against a seller's total feedback for the same period. Formerly, the feedback rating was computed using a seller's lifetime total on eBay, not just the prior 12 months. There are more arcane, subtle changes in eBay's feedback policy which were announced in February and put into effect on the auction site in mid-May. Along with dramatic increases in Final Value Fees (FVF), sellers have expressed emotions ranging from anger to disgust over the rash of changes at eBay. Many sellers feel that they "level playing field" has been significantly tilted in the buyers' favor and that eBay management has left sellers with few tools with which to defend themselves against malicious buyers, non-paying buyers or buyers who just see the opportunity to damage a seller's reputation for whatever reason they deem appropriate. Over the past two weeks, calls for changes, seller boycotts and threats of moving business to other less-restrictive auction sites have been widespread, but eBay executives have downplayed the storm of protest, insisting that their changes will improve the overall buying experience and weed out "bad" sellers. In viewing the actual auction counts, it is notable that the largest declines came in two of the most popular, long-standing selling categories, Antiques and Collectibles, which saw listing declines of 7.85% and 7.84% respectively. eBay Motors may be feeling the effects of high gas prices and a general dislike for anything automotive, as listings in the super-category fell by a whopping 12.3% during the week. Of eBay's 34 main categories, 30 were in decline, while only four saw increases over the past week. Three of the four gainers were among the smallest categories by number of items listed - Gift Certificates, Specialty Services and Travel. Only Real Estate is smaller than those categories. The other category gaining ground was Books, which added nearly 30,000 listings during the week. The causes of the gains are not entirely clear, though items can be listed in the category for less than in other categories, which could have led some sellers to purposely mis-categorize listings, hoping to save a few dollars in the process. The other, more probable cause, is that Buy.com recently added thousands of books to their offerings on eBay. It's been confirmed that Buy.com recently entered into an agreement to list and sell items on eBay. Randy Smythe's My Blog Utopia reported on May 2, 2008, that Buy.com listings were proliferating across the eBay site. At last look, Buy.com had 530,782 listings on the eBay US site, accounting for roughly 3.5% of all listings and significantly skewing the auction listings counts since the beginning of May. Buy.com sells under the user name "buy". How this will affect auction counts is obvious. It raises the entire number. How it affects eBay's bottom line - since they are surely offering discounts to this large-volume retailer - is as yet unknown. What is certain is that despite eBay's attempts to keep everyone happy, the natives - mostly the cadre of seasoned sellers who have been with eBay for 5 years or longer - are growing increasingly restless. Rick Gagliano May 28, 2008 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.