The weekend free listings are now going to be rotational but how often

[casbit33]

After contacting ebay, i was told that the weekend free listings are now rotational. 

but they won't tell me how often they will come around.

They said they couldn't tell me because it is computer generated.

Perhaps they don't know that you actually have to program a computer to get it to do that.

The programmer knows but they just won't tell. Why the big secret. It doesn't make sense.

And before you say there is already a thread about the weekend free listings - i started this one because the other one got taken over

by nasty trolls and has now gone down a different track.

so if anyone knows how often the rotations are could you please post on here.

thanks

[ringinthedingding]

Chameleon Said: "Please check your facts before posting rubbish like this as it simply is not true. In the 2017 full year ebay LOST $ 1.013 billion ! A couple  more years like that and its Bye Bye ebay. Luckily they turned things around in the 2018 financial year posting a 2.5 Billion dollar profit, giving an average profit for the last two years of around $750 million. Well under the billions of dollars you quoted.."

To Chameleon .. It is hard not to believe that money was not lost in ebay's Swiss Bank account .. there has been highly credible investigative journalists who have written stories/hit-pieces about ebay's accounting practices ridiculing their use of tax havens and highly questionable deductions ..

in my opinion one must take any claim by ebay or for that matter many corporate businesses claims of profit or loss with a grain of salt .. especially those aligned with the American Chamber of Commerce etc as is clear to see that in recent years many of these types of entities have in fact been focused on market domination rather than actual year to year profit .. time will tell how successful this gambit is .. I expect there to be a major market shakeout in coming years ..

one thing I will say is that ebay appears to have lost focus of it's core business model and instead over 10 years ago started boasting about disruptive innovation which for many ebay sellers translated to diluted services and reduced sellthrough of product .. just look at the google targeted advertising which accompanies many listed items on ebay and that tells me a story of ebay selling out it's user base and redirecting traffic to other websites ..

It is hard to get excited about selling on ebay when these types of ethics are in use by the upper ebay management, ebay accountants and ebay marketing departments etc etc .. I could write quite a bit about the history of this business within the Australian market and how our ACCC has been overly compliant and anti Australian by blocking Australian companies from merging who wanted to compete against ebay (trading Post and OZtion) and also allowing ebay to acquire Gumtree and a few other little ditties but will refrain and just leave it there as most is bound to fall on deaf ears and one eyed ebay spruikers etc etc ..

It is difficult for me to support a company with these type of ethics and is also clear that Australian businesses will not be given a fair go or be able to compete against tax dodging multi-national corporations etc within Australia .. I won't get into the whole share buy back schemes in operation but suffice to say very little about corporate operations (especially within Australia) is fair or decent ..

All this may go a long way to explaining ebay's constant backflipping and radical policy shifts and in more recent times apparent over-zealous use of buyer and seller incentives .. as for if they are making a profit or loss I imagine very few would actually know that for sure and certain ..

[brerrabbit585]

"one thing I will say is that ebay appears to have lost focus of it's core business model"

They haven't lost focus, they've changed their focus.  Any company who doesn't change with the times won't survive, and if ebay's changes have meant that some sellers are sacrificed that's part of life.  You can't please everyone all the time. 

Some people think that ebay has sold out on the sellers who 'made ebay' (by selling in the earlier days), but those sellers never owned ebay and have never had any say in the direction ebay takes.  The shareholders own ebay and they are the only ones who have a say in how the company is operated, not sellers (unless you own shares as well as sell).

Some people like to claim that it's all the secondhand items that made ebay, but fashions in collecting change and ebay can't rely on making enough revenue from things people used to sell.  At one stage I bought about 10K of a particular product to resell because there were a lot of people collecting them.  It's just as well I resold them when I did because hardly anyone buys those items any more.  With so many people collecting items and not reselling them, there's a limit to how many secondhand collectable items will come onto the market.  

If you think some of us spruik ebay, we've been through enough frustrations that we've learnt not to waste our time getting upset about it but just concentrate on doing what we can to survive.  I prefer to concentrate on the positive things, one of which is that ebay allows me to sell from home and do things when they're most convenient so that my health problems don't get worse.  For people who never have anything good to say about ebay, I have to wonder why they use it?  Are they the same with their friends and acquaintances - denigrate them publicly but still use them when it suits them?

Who are you suggesting has money put away in a Swiss bank account?  If it was ebay it'd belong to all the shareholders.  If it was an employee who stole from them then it's not ebay who's hidden it.  

[ringinthedingding]

.. I can't say what I think as would be quickly deleted and derided as conspiracy theory but suffice to say that I have worked in corporate business and co-ordinated a wildly successful project which is one of the most profitable operations if not the most profitable internet business in this country to this day and have seen enough .. I was responsible for designing and managing the data collection component which obviously integrated with the front end and was very hands on writting some of the more difficult portions of the code .. I have spent quite some time with marketing managers, company CEOs, sales representatives and discussing tactics in boardrooms .. I have seen enough to have a fair idea .. anyway I don't want to let the cat completely out of the bag but have seen enough and had enough of it all and am now retired .. suffice to say I do not think the shareholders have much say about what goes on at ebay and will leave it there ..

[frankiepaddo]

why?

Because I have 2000 individual different items ready to go with starting prices between $5 - $50 which i don't list.

Why?

Because they are not "in demand" things I normally sell perhaps 50 items (if i was lucky out of 2000 I upload).

It's not a big number but ebay would make $100-$200 in that month in commissions from me.

Now i list 40 items (with free insertions) and sell about 5 items and ebay makes $10 off me.

Their "shareholders' are losing money.

Worse still (for ebay) I have started selling on other forms ... not as good but no fees.

So ebay shareholders are losing still more money.

Tell that to the shareholders.

[k1ooo-slr-sales]

@frankiepaddo

try to look at it from eBay's point of view:

- you no longer list 1,915 items that, by your own words, will not sell

- instead, you only list 35 items that will not sell

- unless you are selling bespoke items the 45 items of yours that would sell but are not listed will likely be bought by buyers from other sellers

- if buyers get the items from other sellers for a comparable price then eBay still make the money they would have had you listed

- if there are just ten other Aussie sellers who are in the same situation then that is 19,600 items that are not listed. Another way of looking at this is that the eBay site is less cluttered by 19,600 items flooding the site

- if it were 1 million sellers world wide then it would be 1.96 billion less clutter . . . making it a little easier for buyers to sort through search results

- if buyers have a bad search experience because search results are cluttered with non-selling junk they might just give up without buying . . . hence the need to declutter the site. Happy buyers = returning buyers

- eBay still makes a lot of money, and not just from sold items. There are store subs, advertising, big-retail sellers selling in the millions every year

So, considering the dot points I have listed above, your 1,960 unlisted items, 1,915 of which would not sell, doesn't seem such a big deal to eBay.

My advice, only list the 40 most likely to sell items.

Consider opening a basic store if that would help. However, if your sell through rate is 50/2000 then it might not be worth opening a store.

Good luck

[padi*0409]

---

@k1ooo-slr-sales wrote:

- if there are just ten other Aussie sellers who are in the same situation then that is 19,600 items that are not listed. Another way of looking at this is that the eBay site is less cluttered by 19,600 items flooding the site

- if it were 1 million sellers world wide then it would be 1.96 billion less clutter . . . making it a little easier for buyers to sort through search results

---

I couldn't agree more slr, most of my searches weren't affected by the unlimited listings, but the ones that were made the search an absolute P1TA on "newly listed" with all the absolute carp the sellers had listed.- mostly junk that even an Op-shop wouldn't take and were really only suitable for the local tip...........

[*tippy*toes*]

---

@frankiepaddo wrote:

why?

Because I have 2000 individual different items ready to go with starting prices between $5 - $50 which i don't list.

Why?

Because they are not "in demand" things I normally sell perhaps 50 items (if i was lucky out of 2000 I upload).

It's not a big number but ebay would make $100-$200 in that month in commissions from me.

Now i list 40 items (with free insertions) and sell about 5 items and ebay makes $10 off me.

Their "shareholders' are losing money.

Worse still (for ebay) I have started selling on other forms ... not as good but no fees.

So ebay shareholders are losing still more money.

Tell that to the shareholders.

---

EBay is NOT losing money because of you. You are nothing to eBay. Nothing at all. You are less than a single grain of sand on a beach when it comes to fees. Shareholders are equally not losing money because you are paying less fees. Do you think you'd go broke in a hurry if your weekly pay was cut by $2.50? I thought so.

You're welcome.

[brerrabbit585]

They're probably saving heaps in maintenance costs by not allowing things to be listed forever when they're extremely slow to sell.

They possibly work on the Pareto Principle (the 80/20 rule) that states it's far better to concentrate on the 20% of your efforts (sellers in this case) that earn you 80% of your revenue. As far as they're concerned it would be worth getting rid of the 80% of sellers who only earn them 20% of their revenue, while costing them probably 80% of their maintenance costs. Their income would only be down by 20% but their running costs would be drastically reduced, and buyers would be much, much happier so they'd probably sell enough extra that they'd make up for the 20% revenue they lost from the ineffective sellers.