Tough Road Ahead For eBay As It Battles Increased Competition

Forbes ^ | 09/25/15 | Forbes

[RckyRaCoCo]

eBay, one of the leading players in the global e-commerce market, is expected to face a tough road ahead after the recent spin-off of its payments business. In our valuation model, we forecast the company to lose market share in the global B2C e-commerce market, which was valued at over $1.5 trillion in 2015, over our forecast horizon. This is as the company is seeing dramatic increase in competition, from both e-commerce giants such as Amazon and Alibaba, as well as from upcoming players such as Jet.com.

[RckyRaCoCo]

10% final value fee(not counting listing fee)I'm sure has got nothing to do with it. Must be losing a lot of small margin sellers...with a combined 15% take between Ebay/Paypal.

The prices on a lot of items lately have been reflecting that also.

[4yearlurker]

Ebay is now loaded with AdChoice garbage. Buyers are having a hard time paying for items because of all the ads. Sellers pages are freezing up because of all the ads. Buyers are now going to Amazon. Who ever is running Ebay now has run it into the ground.

[packrat35]

Blame Meg Whitman who started the road to ruin for eBay.

[Artemis Webb]

I have never had any of the issues you describe.
AdChoice isn’t on ebay. It’s on your computer. You need to have it removed.

[headstamp 2]

That and the BS six month guarantee.

[faithhopecharity]

we are ‘tracking’ a dozen different items on ebay, waiting to be notified when someone offers nay of them for sale

we’ve had zero such notices in almost two months. curious, we’ve done some checking online and discover that many of the things ebay used to have MANY sellers of.....now there are none, or only a very small number.

it appears (very limited sampling, admittedly) that ebay has lost a tremendous number of sellers

we wonder if there is another website out there, especially for old ‘collectibles’.... that’s grabbing the market away from ebay?

insofar as ebay selling paypal, that seems to me at least to be a terrible business decision. in that the paypal franchise looks like it has great promise in a number of financial transactions and services niches

[freedomfiter2]

EBay takes 10% of shipping as well.

[dennisw]

I used to always buy ebay but now I buy half Amazon too. There are lots of very active storefronts on ebay. Amaazon has nothing like this. But I usually buy from little guys on ebay who are selling what I want. Got a great deal on a hardly used juicer last month

[VanDeKoik]

I’m lucky that I’m able to buy real low and sell at a tremendous mark-up that just looks like a reasonable price to the average buyer.

Their fees only cut my margins from obscene to absurd. :)

[RckyRaCoCo]

Heh, funny you should say that...I'm in the market for one myself. Thought about checking out thrift stores(good for stuff like that)...but who knows what(or who)'s been run through one of those.

Any tips for a beginner?(brands/types, etc.)

[4yearlurker]

Just read the Ebay Forums. One has to opt out of Adchoice on Ebay (under site preferences) and every week you have to do it all over again. After 12 years Ebay sales are in the toilet. Lots of folks complaining.

[Oberon]

For a while I had a cast bullet business and was selling them as reloading supplies on e-Bay, in addition to various other things I would sell. Then their leadership enacted a policy that the cast bullets would no longer be allowed.

So now I do almost no business on there at all, except occasionally I will buy something there that is hard to find anywhere else.

[Cedar]

Sure hope they continue. I’ve just this week begun thinking of selling items on eBay. Need to read through all the seller rules, so have been putting it off...nothing is simple anymore.

[catfish1957]

Beginning of the end for eBay started when they started forcing buyers to use paypal.

[Maudeen]

EBay takes 10% of shipping as well.

---

Ship a cheap “very heavy” item . . . not much profit for the seller there . . . In my opinion they got greedy and have lost their appeal.

[jwalsh07]

EBay is as left wing as it gets. Good riddens.

[sheana]

Years ago I sold authentic designer handbags, shoes, etc on eBay. Did quite well. Then they opened it up to China. My profits plummeted because there was so much fake stuff on there and people couldn’t tell the difference. I haven’t sold a thing on there since.

[4yearlurker]

What hurt me the most is when Ebay started the buy it now had to be 30% more than the listing price. After 12 years my sales are almost nonexistent.

[riri]

Every six months they completely over haul the rules on sellers too.

It was rumored that the last CEO said he didn't like going to cocktail parties and saying he was running the "flea market" website. He wanted to be more like Amazon.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Who has time to “watch” an item? If I need something, I’ll buy it outright. I don’t have time to play the game of watching my bid until the last seconds when someone will undercut me anyway.