Ebay forum is dying

oatmeal

Senior Member
Joined
May 20, 2015
Messages
1,183
Reaction score
785
Wow, I'm a bit shocked at how low volume this ebay thread is doing lately.
I remember when I joined here few years ago this ebay section was always
busy and tons of people posting replies. Nowadays, it's not uncommon to
get zero replies and only about 50-60 views per post. Why is the ebay
thread dying?

Did I miss something? Maybe there is a mass exodus from ebay to amazon?
It seems not a lot of people on here use or talk much about ebay anymore.
 
Things ebb and flow online and in the forum. That is normal life actually.

Remember when the home page was littered with all the BTC/Crypto threads and posts?

It is how things roll and seemingly will always roll.
 
I remember when I joined here few years ago this ebay section was always
busy and tons of people posting replies.
Not true. Where exactly are you pulling these numbers out of? The eBay section’s been this way since 2013.
 
eBay already died in india.

was just taken over and killed by Flipkart! really a lot of small businesses that depended only on Ebay were left with no options.
 
People must have figured out, it's not an easy racket and there's more money to be made elsewhere with less hassle. Dealing with inventory, clients, deliveries, PayPal and all, can be a real pain in the ass. Fees got higher. While buyer protection is strong, seller protection is literally non-existent even in clearer than the sun situations.

eBay changed a lot throughout the years, you can't sell a lot of stuff now, which you could in the past. PayPal holding your funds isn't too much of a help either, which wasn't the case back then. And i can imagine, if you want to bend the rules, it's a lot harder to game the system now, than it was back then. And when you need to play by the rules, it often means, it's harder to make (big) profit. And this forum was always about shortcuts, bending the rules.

eBay lost a lot of customers to Amazon for sure, but it's not just Amazon, it's Aliexpress too, people buy cheap sh*t directly from there nowadays. There are countless online shops, where you can get high priced items (e.g. electronics) often cheaper than on eBay, everyday eBay sellers can't compete with the discounts of big retailers. Or how many fashion retailers are there nowadays, who weren't there 5-10 years ago or were nowhere as popular as now? Competition is fierce.
And many changes happened in other industries too, which have an effect on eBay. For instance, take a look at gaming, most people don't buy physical games anymore, they buy games on Steam or similar. The situation is the same in two other industries: we mostly stream movies and music these days, less and less people buy CDs, DVDs or other physical discs. The way we consume media affected these industries, which affected eBay negatively.

Sure, there are many sections on eBay, but these are just a few big industries from the top of my head, where there were radical changes.

At this point i think, eBay is mostly good for selling/buying used stuff, in demand fashion items (sneaker reselling), collector's items, vintage or otherwise rare stuff or unwanted items, but this latter is never done on a big scale.
 
People must have figured out, it's not an easy racket and there's more money to be made elsewhere with less hassle. Dealing with inventory, clients, deliveries, PayPal and all, can be a real pain in the ass. Fees got higher. While buyer protection is strong, seller protection is literally non-existent even in clearer than the sun situations.

eBay changed a lot throughout the years, you can't sell a lot of stuff now, which you could in the past. PayPal holding your funds isn't too much of a help either, which wasn't the case back then. And i can imagine, if you want to bend the rules, it's a lot harder to game the system now, than it was back then. And when you need to play by the rules, it often means, it's harder to make (big) profit. And this forum was always about shortcuts, bending the rules.

eBay lost a lot of customers to Amazon for sure, but it's not just Amazon, it's Aliexpress too, people buy cheap sh*t directly from there nowadays. There are countless online shops, where you can get high priced items (e.g. electronics) often cheaper than on eBay, everyday eBay sellers can't compete with the discounts of big retailers. Or how many fashion retailers are there nowadays, who weren't there 5-10 years ago or were nowhere as popular as now? Competition is fierce.
And many changes happened in other industries too, which have an effect on eBay. For instance, take a look at gaming, most people don't buy physical games anymore, they buy games on Steam or similar. The situation is the same in two other industries: we mostly stream movies and music these days, less and less people buy CDs, DVDs or other physical discs. The way we consume media affected these industries, which affected eBay negatively.

Sure, there are many sections on eBay, but these are just a few big industries from the top of my head, where there were radical changes.

At this point i think, eBay is mostly good for selling/buying used stuff, in demand fashion items (sneaker reselling), collector's items, vintage or otherwise rare stuff or unwanted items, but this latter is never done on a big scale.
second hand or refurbished items...

and lol
when eBay said there no more trading from eBay to Amazon or amazon to eBay that killed it...

PayPal become a proper bank fuck no how lots has happened.

everyone I no complain everything comes from aliexpress and full apart.

you can still use eBay but most china companies are already on there .

you get the odd wholesaler challenge dropshipper price, the wholesale price so low not worth challenging.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
I still do quite well on eBay. I am actually glad that there isn't a ton fuck of people trying to game the system there. I think its shiny object syndrome and people have moved on to other platforms with the promises of riches with simple 3 step systems.
 
People must have figured out, it's not an easy racket and there's more money to be made elsewhere with less hassle. Dealing with inventory, clients, deliveries, PayPal and all, can be a real pain in the ass. Fees got higher. While buyer protection is strong, seller protection is literally non-existent even in clearer than the sun situations.

eBay changed a lot throughout the years, you can't sell a lot of stuff now, which you could in the past. PayPal holding your funds isn't too much of a help either, which wasn't the case back then. And i can imagine, if you want to bend the rules, it's a lot harder to game the system now, than it was back then. And when you need to play by the rules, it often means, it's harder to make (big) profit. And this forum was always about shortcuts, bending the rules.

eBay lost a lot of customers to Amazon for sure, but it's not just Amazon, it's Aliexpress too, people buy cheap sh*t directly from there nowadays. There are countless online shops, where you can get high priced items (e.g. electronics) often cheaper than on eBay, everyday eBay sellers can't compete with the discounts of big retailers. Or how many fashion retailers are there nowadays, who weren't there 5-10 years ago or were nowhere as popular as now? Competition is fierce.
And many changes happened in other industries too, which have an effect on eBay. For instance, take a look at gaming, most people don't buy physical games anymore, they buy games on Steam or similar. The situation is the same in two other industries: we mostly stream movies and music these days, less and less people buy CDs, DVDs or other physical discs. The way we consume media affected these industries, which affected eBay negatively.

Sure, there are many sections on eBay, but these are just a few big industries from the top of my head, where there were radical changes.

At this point i think, eBay is mostly good for selling/buying used stuff, in demand fashion items (sneaker reselling), collector's items, vintage or otherwise rare stuff or unwanted items, but this latter is never done on a big scale.

Agree with all of that.

Although we still sell on eBay it does alright for us as seller there is zero protection. Even the review system now is totally broken we find our selfs getting 1 feedback review from 70 orders or so. It's a nightmare. The other thing as well is we have found the volume of items not received has shot up almost 1 in 3 items going out - we replace for free as our profit margin allows it.

However since switching from our PPI account to paying for barcode tracking (costs us a little bit more compared to our standard account rates) our INR requests have fallen through the floor more so when you tell people "I'll just ask the postal company to verify delivery thanks to the little QR code on the front of the packet" we get customers instantly backing down or the item magically arrives that day.

I've always treated it as a tool someplace to be seen and test new products, find new customers. I pity anyone who uses it as a sole outlet for their business unless it's already established I think it's hard going..
 
I just thought if you compared Amazon and ebay, the amount of traffic and questions/interest is so much bigger on Amazon. I don't sell on Amazon (would like to), but I am an Amazon prime member mainly to try and dropship to ebay. But ebay, while not as big as Amazon anymore, it still is one of the largest (2nd or 3rd?) selling site on the internet. I'm just surprised at how little traffic there is in this forum section. Maybe I need to find a different forum for my ebay questions but I don't know where else you can really go. I've tried aspkin but not sure where else would be a good.

Yes, it's a love hate relationship with ebay. Obviously, it was so easy to set up a store and start selling on ebay and you get instant market reach to millions of people you could have never reached on your own. So that's where the fees are justified. But then on the other hand, the fees are a PITA combined with PP fees and at the end of the day, you're making very little after the fees take a huge bite out of your earnings. I'm a small-time seller / dropshiper and I pay around $500 USD per month in ebay/pp fees. I think I'm only taking home about $200 in profit per month, so do I wish I could be pocketing $700 / month? Yes, but man, they take so much out of you.

I wonder why with so many "brilliant" people in this world now in ecommerce/online business etc., why they can't just make other ebay-like sites?
All the crap that we hate about ebay, change it on the new site and make it more seller friendly? I dunno...maybe that's just idealistic and easier said than done but it feels like all we are doing is just forcing ourselves to play by their rules instead of trying to create our own ebay from the millions of ebay sellers ....I'm sure they could easily pool together and start their own selling site.
 
coz there's nothing much to talk about anymore. What's new to eBay?
 
bc those of us making money on it don't want to talk about it. i think most people have it "figured out" and just stay focused without blabbing. got enough competition as is
 
Reddit Is still full of eBay questions, but mostly to complain about their platform and bad customers
 
I just thought if you compared Amazon and ebay, the amount of traffic and questions/interest is so much bigger on Amazon. I don't sell on Amazon (would like to), but I am an Amazon prime member mainly to try and dropship to ebay. But ebay, while not as big as Amazon anymore, it still is one of the largest (2nd or 3rd?) selling site on the internet. I'm just surprised at how little traffic there is in this forum section. Maybe I need to find a different forum for my ebay questions but I don't know where else you can really go. I've tried aspkin but not sure where else would be a good.

Yes, it's a love hate relationship with ebay. Obviously, it was so easy to set up a store and start selling on ebay and you get instant market reach to millions of people you could have never reached on your own. So that's where the fees are justified. But then on the other hand, the fees are a PITA combined with PP fees and at the end of the day, you're making very little after the fees take a huge bite out of your earnings. I'm a small-time seller / dropshiper and I pay around $500 USD per month in ebay/pp fees. I think I'm only taking home about $200 in profit per month, so do I wish I could be pocketing $700 / month? Yes, but man, they take so much out of you.

I wonder why with so many "brilliant" people in this world now in ecommerce/online business etc., why they can't just make other ebay-like sites?
All the crap that we hate about ebay, change it on the new site and make it more seller friendly? I dunno...maybe that's just idealistic and easier said than done but it feels like all we are doing is just forcing ourselves to play by their rules instead of trying to create our own ebay from the millions of ebay sellers ....I'm sure they could easily pool together and start their own selling site.

You can ask all your question on reddit r/flipping or r/ebay
 
Back
Top