Seems that eGay is losing market shares on the go. Doesn't seems good for them

Amazon and Craigslist Batter eBay from Both Sides
Friday January 23, 2009

eBay has reported that for the first time ever, their 4th quarter revenues fell from the previous quarter.

eBay is being squeezed from both sides. In fixed price listings, buyers (and sellers) are flocking to Amazon. At the other end of the spectrum, sellers are dumping their household stuff on free classifieds site Craigslist instead of posting auctions on eBay.

Since John Donahue took over from Meg Whitman as eBay's CEO in March 2008, he has led the revamping of the marketplace to be friendlier to fixed price sellers in order to compete with rival Amazon. But that hasn't stemmed the exodus of fixed price buyers away from eBay to Amazon.

For December's holiday sales frenzy, Amazon traffic rose 9.8% over the same month in 2007, while eBay traffic fell 2.5%.

"At the end of the day, if you compare the experience of buying fixed-price items on eBay vs. buying them on Amazon, Amazon wins," says Jim Friedland, an analyst at Cowen & Co. who has a neutral rating on eBay's stock. "It's such a better shopping experience."

It's going to be worse before it gets better. Lowering expectations for this quarter, eBay said it will miss analysts' profit estimates for 2009 Q1 by nearly 20%. "The company said first-quarter profits will be 32¢ to 34¢ a share, well below the 40¢ estimated by Wall Street", reports BusinessWeek.

http://onlinebusiness.about.com/?once=true&

eBay needs to wake up.

They're going to run themselves out of business by jacking up their fees from all sides.

It's no wonder no one wants to list there, why pay all those fees when you can get the same thing done for less or for free?

And really, have there been any serious improvements to the site/service since they started jacking up the prices? I think the lion's share of those fees goes to paying the salaries of their (overpaid) CEOs.

Serves them right! I hope Paypal will also start losing money soon, maybe they'll revise their TOS and rethink their whole business strategy of fucking people over.

They've been making it harder for small sellers with every passing year (this is intentional if you ask me). Also, their site is a pain to navigate on the seller side. Bout time they get what they've been asking for IMO.

I would have to agree. Amazon is tearing them up right now. I used to think that Amazon should go for the kill and make an auction side of their site, but I don't think they need to, but I think it would be a very nice addition to CL, it seems to make more sense to me for CL to do that now.

Originally Posted by y2kh8r

They've been making it harder for small sellers with every passing year (this is intentional if you ask me). Also, their site is a pain to navigate on the seller side. Bout time they get what they've been asking for IMO.

You hit the nail on the head. They are driving small sellers out. On the high profit items you will notice that there are maybe 2 or 3 sellers that completely dominate, and everybody else gets raped by VERO. On top of that, if you do manage to get your listings to stay up, you always have an anxious feeling knowing that at any time paypal can decide to make you their bitch.

A couple months ago I started selling on Amazon, and I gotta tell ya, I may never go back to ebay and if I do, I will not run nearly as much volume as I do on Amazon...

Ebay's fees are ridiculous, I sold an item last week for $150 (after not having sold anything for 2 years). At the end of the day egay/gaypal fees were over $16.00!! That's more than 10%, way too much!! I hate you egay/gaypal

Originally Posted by Essential Clix

eBay needs to wake up.
They're going to run themselves out of business by jacking up their fees from all sides.

It's no wonder no one wants to list there, why pay all those fees when you can get the same thing done for less or for free?

And really, have there been any serious improvements to the site/service since they started jacking up the prices? I think the lion's share of those fees goes to paying the salaries of their (overpaid) CEOs.

If your main beef w/ebay is fees, then don't bother w/Amazon theirs are higher I think
I tolerate them because Amazon isn't constantly jerking you around.

Amazon's fees are damn near rape...

ebay owns a significant share in Craigslist so is that really losing market share..?

They deserve all they get, I've never known a company so difficult to work with and communicate with.

I had a job with a big European IT Distributor, I'd worked there before on sales and they asked me to setup and run an eBay account selling all there obsolete and seconds stock. I was getting paid £500 per week and 5% commission for 20 hours work.
One Sunday I got an email from someone who'd been contacted through eBay's system offering them an item that we were selling and that he'd bid on. It was the usual 'you bid on our item but were unsuccessful but we have another one' thing, but our auction was still live. The message had the senders ID at the top, so it had plainly come from another account, but they'd just typed our ID at the bottom. I did what I thought was the right thing to do and contacted eBay.
10 minutes later, our account was suspended and 20 + auctions were ended. I emailed them to ask why and got the standard bullshit reply. The account that the scam message had come from wasn't penalised in any way. It took 10 days and fuck knows how many emails before they reinstated us. I lost somewhere around £1500 in pay. I asked them about this and was told to take it up with their legal department in San Jose. Wankers...

I've sold on both, I've done extremely well on both. I have to say I like amazon much better, no upfront listing fees, you can list as much stuff as you want and rating doesn't play that big of part in selling.

They now have a 21 day hold on accounts with paypal/ebay. So you have to make sure you already have the money instead of dropshipping.

Amazon will hold your account too if you sell to much too fast as well. My first $4,000 day they held my account. Once they review and you prove you shipped they'll release and you'll me making your millions once again

Wait so you are basically you arr drop shipping $4000 of stuff a day through amazon

amazon seems to be the way to go nowadays. ebay JUST jacked up their price.

No shit. Like I have to pay ebay to use their service. Not only that, I have to pay paypal to use theirs when they are the same damn company? How about black-thorn? It's impossible to be a start up seller there anymore. How many times do I have to pay the same damn company to list an item? It is and always has been out of freaking control the way they nickle and dime. I can't even buy anything on ebay without paying them multiple times. They will go down for it. unless they change.