It’s Official! Price Wars on eBay Spell Disaster and Demise of Small Sellers

Posted by admin in Internet Marketing, Webinar, ebay on 11 14th, 2008 | 2 responses

eBay Makes It Official

eBay conducted a webinar yesterday. Originally intended for Titanium Level PowerSellers, eBay apparently was convinced by Scot Wingo CEO of Channeladvisor to open the webinar to anyone. Thanks Scot!

I listened in for about 35 minutes and quickly understood the focus of this webinar.

Lower Your Price
Provide Free Shipping

That’s it! Total focus of the presentation is based totally on being a high volume, low margin seller. These two factors along with having quantity of product available are the secret to getting your items to the top of best match.

Having quantity of product will enhance your standing in Best Match because Recent Sales is the major determing factor in Search Results. Yes there are other factors, but Recent Sales of the IDENTICAL ITEM is the key!

What this all boils down to is this. Large volume sellers will be controlling the categories they sell in. Once they control the category by price, pushing out smaller sellers, they will then OWN their category. This means they can control supply, pricing, etc. Can you see price wars coming? I can!

I wrote about this some months ago, and stand on my theory! Good bye eBay! I am a small seller and you have made it impossible for me to compete!

Share this article

del.icio.us Digg it Earthlink Furl iFeedReaders ma.gnolia Maple.nu Netvouz Netscape RawSugar reddit Scuttle Shadows Simpy Spurl StumbleUpon Wink Yahoo MyWeb

2 Comments »

enngga Says:
November 14th, 2008 at 12:17 pm

Dave I Agree. I could not compete there because I was a small Seller. I did not have anything that was massed produced.
I had individual unique items. I tried but items did not show up in search. So they had so many complaints. They started a program for you to buy Advertising for your Store. So that it could be seen. Somehow that does not sit right with me, and does not work for me.
Henrietta Says:
December 1st, 2008 at 10:16 am

When I pay an insertion fee I am paying for visibility. If my insertion fee does not get my item visibility it is not a sound business decision to continue throwing good money after bad.

I do not understand this focus on cheap with no reference to quality. A poorly made or knockoff item will not surprise and delight a buyer when it does not match their anticipations.

Aiming for the lowest common denominator always results in degradation. Who wants to wallow in the dirt? Not me.

RSS feed for comments on this post. TrackBack URL

Online Sales Decline So eCommerce Marketplaces Buy June 25, 2010
It’s Summertime While some online merchants are reporting declining sales (summertime is normally a slow season for some categories) it seems the ecommerce marketplaces are trying to provide their own economic stimulus. Earlier this year Japanese giant Rakuten purchased Buy.com for a reported $250M and according to Randy Smythe, Merchant Evangelist at Buy ev […]
admin
BooCoo.com Jumps Into The Online Auction Marketplace June 19, 2010
BooCoo.com About 2 weeks ago my good friend Walt Kolenda (aka AuctionWally) suggested I check out a new online auction venue called BooCoo.com. Now in full disclosure Walt is doing some consulting work for this site. I took a look at the site and then received an email from Tony Marsella COO of Rangerdata.com parent company of [...] […]
admin