Why I'm just about through with eBay

[savedfrommyspokes]

Originally Posted by Runscott

Yep. The system is set up for sellers who are willing to go one of two routes:

• high-volume fixed-price auctions
• high-volume straight auctions with shill accounts and/or customers who shill their own auctions.

Currently, this route works only if the seller is a high volume seller because he is able to turn his inventory at an aggressive rate and offers items at higher price points. Otherwise the fees associated with maintaining a high volume/low inventory turn ebay store (5 cents per listings/month) will make it a less than profitable venture.

As mentioned in other posts, ebay is constantly changing its MO to improve it's own profitability. The announcements for these policy changes typically occur early each year....each year I wait for the announcement so I can begin the decision making process on how to adjust my ebay store's offerings to best influence my own profitability.

I have tried another on-line e-commerce venue(Volusion) for selling. The cost associated with this other e-commerce site is significantly lower than ebay(the cost for Volusion was 10% of what I typically pay ebay monthly), however, the traffic to this site was non existent compared to ebay. Of course, if I were to have reinvested the money saved from ebay into marketing my Volusion site, my traffic would have likely have been better.

IMO, with the large number of these other on-line e-commerce venues now available at significantly lower costs than ebay, ebay will be forced to react to these competitors lower rates by lowering their costs associated with maintaining an inventory. For some sellers, ebay has already reacted by offering 25k free fixed priced listings/month for Sept-Dec of this year. It will be interesting to see if eBay's 2014's changes will reflect this year's trend to be more competitive with the other e-commerce site's rates.