I wonder if ebay is losing money?

[onekiwi0]

over 650 items listed of  many types (on two diff ids) and not one peep yesterday or today.

I know theres threads throughout the forum on who turned the lights out, I see the promos ebay is offering re discounts... (not so much the dick smith as they're going under) and I wonder how they are making a profit.

yes they give pref to the big guys but even so, is ebay a thing of the past?  not sure what else I can do to boost my sales, except offer for less money / free but I'd like to make a wee bit of profit...

i also sell items occasionally on FB groups but its been quiet there too, likely olmpics and people having no money to spend...

[clarry100]

We have 5x ebay selling IDs and all of them have been very, very quiet.

So much so that its not worth our time to list things at auction any more on the 3x auction IDs.

Our two store IDs have all but stopped altogether. Just a few sales each day is all.

The amount of effort required to list is not worth the paltry sales.

But it's not restricted to ebay.

We are rarley seeing a sale on our etsy store. Perhaps one or two per week.

Also the same with traffic thru our website.

In fact last week we went a full day without a single visitor to our website. Not even the rubbish ones.

That has never happened before.

We know the Chinese people who own/operate one of the major Chinese restaurants in our area.

They have had it running for 20+ years.

They are saying its so slow that its barely worthwhile them opening their doors.

They are very close to walking away from it as it's worthless on the market as well.

We also supply to a couple of people who do markets in our area.

They are saying that the markets are very slow too and we feel that as they have slowed down their buying from us.

So we think it has a lot to do with the general sate of public confidence in the economy.

[esayaf]

As there are only a few CEO's in Australia it's no wonder sales are down.
Apparently the CEO of the Commonwealth bank has had his salary raised to 12.3 million. If we can convince him to start collecting all manner of junk we'll be laughing

[cezm]

I believe Dick Smith has been bought out by Kogan.

[chameleon54]

The best way to accurately gauge whether ebay is making or losing money is to review their reports to the U,S stock exchange. These show ebay is making some money, but not as much as comparable companies. 

Annual turnover is growing by 2-5% when many other similar IT companies are growing by 25-30%. Profit is static although some anylists are expecting a small improvement in profit this quarter. Seller numbers are increasing slightly each year as are buyers, but some of this is driven by the uptake of computers in poorer countries. Share price has not moved much for several years, staying between $25.00 U.S and around $29.00 U.S. An indication that the people that really know, don't think much is happening with the company.

Ebay does not rely entirely on you and me selling stuff to make money. Sales are not really a big driver of profit for them. They make more money from the advertising placed everywhere on the site and have other businesses including a car sales website that is quite profitable to them. Basically small sellers are small beer to ebay. They need keep us to accessing the site so they can show us advertising, but the income they generate from our stores and sales is not as important to ebay as it is to us.

[englishrosegardens]

The way they're handing out vouchers you'd have to wonder about their profit margin.  I see it as a race to the bottom - once you start offering discounts buyers will learn to sit and wait till they get the next one before they buy.  

I had a 15% voucher at the start of August (I saved over $36), a $20 voucher on another ID this week, and now I see I have a 10% voucher on this ID (I didn't get an email for it).  I got three emails for 10% off last week but didn't use those ones.

The 15% off voucher was offered to me for several weeks - when one expired without being used they immediately sent another one, but now that I've used it that ID isn't getting any more.  I rarely buy on the ID that got the $20 off and the email said "it's been a while", so perhaps they're mainly targetting people who don't buy a lot.

[shiver_me_shrimp]

Maybe because interest rates are so low, people are putting thier money into property instead of buying stuff?

[*tippy*toes*]

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@onekiwi0 wrote:

over 650 items listed of  many types (on two diff ids) and not one peep yesterday or today.

I know theres threads throughout the forum on who turned the lights out, I see the promos ebay is offering re discounts... (not so much the dick smith as they're going under) and I wonder how they are making a profit.

yes they give pref to the big guys but even so, is ebay a thing of the past?  not sure what else I can do to boost my sales, except offer for less money / free but I'd like to make a wee bit of profit...

i also sell items occasionally on FB groups but its been quiet there too, likely olmpics and people having no money to spend...

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Dick Smith was bought out by Kogan several months ago and are rapidly building their way up again. You can still get all the old DS home brand things, but they now come out of Kogan instead of DS.

Ad for the discount offers, the seller still gets the full amount, it's the buyer that gets the discount. EBay pays them the difference.

I'm not having any problems with sales. Some of my items are listed higher than other sellers, but people still buy from me for some reason. Some are repeat buyers, but lots aren't. Olympics, economy or any of the other excuses don't seem to have affected me.

[chameleon54]

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@chameleon54 wrote:

The best way to accurately gauge whether ebay is making or losing money is to review their reports to the U,S stock exchange. These show ebay is making some money, but not as much as comparable companies. 

Annual turnover is growing by 2-5% when many other similar IT companies are growing by 25-30%r.. Profit is static although some anylists are expecting a small improvement in profit this quarter. Seller numbers are increasing slightly each year as are buyers, but some of this is driven by the uptake of computers in poorer countries. Share price has not moved much for several years, staying between $25.00 U.S and around $29.00 U.S. An indication that the people that really know, don't think much is happening with the company.

Ebay does not rely entirely on you and me selling stuff to make money. Sales are not really a big driver of profit for them. They make more money from the advertising placed everywhere on the site and have other businesses including a car sales website that is quite profitable to them. Basically small sellers are small beer to ebay. They need keep us to accessing the site so they can show us advertising, but the income they generate from our stores and sales is not as important to ebay as it is to us.

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I just checked ebays current share price and in the last month it has broken above the long term trading level of $25-$29 U.S to reach around $31.50 before settling at around $30.50. This is a major break above long term trend indicating that ebay is in fact improving profits as some anylists have recently predicted. In share trading terms, a major break out and a very signifigant event.  Short answer is YES it looks like ebay is making money and improving its financial position.

Thats not much comfort to the thousands of small sellers who are struggling for sales in a depressed market though.

[rusty-shed]

ebay must be losing money if we dont sell anything