Is ebay still viable?

[medieval_shoppe]

I will soon be paying $25,000 a year in ebay fees, and ebay seems to now be so strict with sellers that it has reached the point of "passive hostility" (I think). I would be interested in hearing other people's opinions. I run a website which has virtually no advertising budget, and costs me  about 2% of what ebay does. And yet it's not unusual for the website to perform better than my eBay! In my small specialized field, $25,000 would be a MASSIVE budget for targeted advertising in Australia; for that kind of money I could pay for some very heavy-duty, year-round, very focused GOOGLE & FACEBOOK marketing. Of course the easy answer is "do both" - but things are rarely that simple. I could only afford a $25,000 advertising budget if I pulled the plug on my ebay.

(I actually wonder if, from a strictly business point of view, whether eBay is sustainable long-term. Over the last 4 years it has become more expensive/irksome to use ebay as a sales platform, if this trend continues by 2016 it's going to be such an expensive, repressive and time-consuming environment to sell in, that it seems prudent to have an exit strategy.)

[chameleon54]

Unfortunately I have to agree with everything you have said. I have in the past been a vocal supporter of the ebay platform. It is a great entry level system for sellers to establish a business with a genuine worldwide customer base. Like many the recent FVF on postage has tipped the model past the point of being highly viable to much more marginal. The aggresive aproach that ebay is currently taking towards sellers is very concerning and leads to uncertianty. I have recently spoken to a computer expert and recieved advice on website designers. I may not be bothered going down this path as I would have to run a seperate parralel stock range which does not suit my business model. Instead I have been developing a non sales based business entirely seperate to the Internet. This has been driven 100% by uncertianty surrounding the ebay business model and is my emergency exit strategy. I would much prefer some certianty from ebay that allows me to continue to grow my business here as it consistently averages 20% growth year on year but feel more vulnerable as time goes on.

[jensmanchester-australia]

For the majority of sellers ebay is still cheaper now than what it was many years ago. There have been numerous changes over the years and several years ago there was a restructure of fees which benefitted most sellers. At the same time though it is always best to never have all your eggs in one basket. If used wisely ebay can be an important part of your business strategy and can help increase your sales elsewhere.

[medieval_shoppe]

Thanks Jensmanchester, it's good to get all points of view. I am not sure, to be honest, whether I am seeing things clearly or if I am being too negative, I am not trying to provoke an eBay bagging fest, just get a variety of perspectives. Actually, the fees I can live with (just about) but I just think that every year it gets easier and easier to get banned or have restrictions placed on your account - this has NEVER happened to me by the way, but there is such a hair-trigger to this happening nowadays, that I am starting to get paranoid. Today's eBay seems too volatile (too easily rocked) for my liking. I would like to stick around, but I worry about the direction its all heading.

[clarry100]

So far this tax year we have paid ebay approx $5,500 in fees across two stores. That is not counting the approx $2,500 in fees to PayPal. We expect that our ebay fees will top $6,500 before the close of the tax year.

We are soon to launch our own independent web site, so like you we could get a whole lot of paid visibility on Google and Facebook with that kind of money.

[medieval_shoppe]

It would purchase you a massive amount, my last campaign on FB, I spent a couple of hundred bucks - it ended up costing me $0.13 per LIKE for my page. That's a genuine LIKE, from an Australian consumer, with a liking for what I sell - thirteen cents. If you had similar success for $5k you would get 38,461 good prospective clients engaging on your Facebook page and website.  If each of them spend on average $10 with you over a year (most will not buy at all, but some may spend $100's - average $10 per person) that's almost $400,000.00 in website sales for a mere $5k FB investment.       

[chameleon54]

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@medieval_shoppe wrote:

Thanks Jensmanchester, it's good to get all points of view. I am not sure, to be honest, whether I am seeing things clearly or if I am being too negative, I am not trying to provoke an eBay bagging fest, just get a variety of perspectives. Actually, the fees I can live with (just about) but I just think that every year it gets easier and easier to get banned or have restrictions placed on your account - this has NEVER happened to me by the way, but there is such a hair-trigger to this happening nowadays, that I am starting to get paranoid. Today's eBay seems too volatile (too easily rocked) for my liking. I would like to stick around, but I worry about the direction its all heading.

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You have expressed my opinion down to a tee. Like you I can handle the latest fee rise, but need to consider where my time is best spent. If I can make more money doing something else ( due to recent ebay fee hikes ) I am better directing my energies there. I also would like to remain here but share your concerns about ebays trigger happy response to minor problems. I have already had one account restriction for supposedly listing an item in the wrong catagory ( I know everyone says this but Ebay was definately in the wrong with this one ) and had several warnings from on high, for other "offences" that I cant mention. IF ebay treated sellers more like proffesional business partners looking to grow thier own and ebays business instead of "naughty school children " I would feel much more comfortable about dedicating time and energy to building my business on this platform. I have always believed ebay has an excellant business platform for small business, with huge customer base, great accounting features, payment collection service etc. Its unfortunate that their heavy handed approach is destabilising and corroding sellers confidence.

[stuffedwithplush]

I always ask myself this question.

If I was to take all of our items off Ebay, would people still be able to find them via Google on my website and would there be way fewer of that sort of product on Ebay ?  if the answer is YES, then take it all off Ebay and concentrate on your website. If not, then you need to focus on the 2 channels for selling.

Cheers

[lane-ends]

To be honest the critical factor is not the fee creeping, it is simply the cost of posting vs the increasing amount of stuff that can be bought from asia for less than we can even post for.They can even supply for less than our local $2 shops  Add to this the fact that these big importers have multiple ids with duplicate listings means if they are in your field you become invisible, even iif you could beat them on a quality product.

This never ending stream of cheap imports is putting a strain on AP, which then ups its costs to us to subsidise the delivery of these imports. Round it gos. 

Ebay makes little money on these cheapies that end up top of the list so up goes the fees to compensate.

[littlefrench]

 We plan to increase the prices through the roof and use it as a cheap advert for the web site, if anyone buys at the silly prices good luck to them

over ebay!!