What is wrong with so many sellers on ebay?!?!?!

I've been selling on eBay for nearly 5 years and the site has changed a lot in that time.

IMO the reason you're seeing listings without much copy is because many sellers are trying to hang on via quantity selling, low margin-high volume. More and more business risk pushed onto sellers, and there already was a lot.

Testing is always a good idea, and eBay has plenty of name recognition to bring in potential customers. But if you haven't sold much on the site since 7 years ago, I'd suggest reading up about the site as though you'd never heard of it before, and see if it makes business sense when plugged into the rest of your concept, before you plunk down big $$ for some skid loads of goods.

I been a powerseller on eBay too many moons ago and my profit margin was acceptable, but I was selling Plasma TV's and sound systems, so my ROI was high.

You would be referring to those sellers that sell lower priced items and once ebay takes fees, of course they don't make a huge profit. In fact, many go under and close shop.

My suggestion would be to sell higher end pricier items. A sale is a sale whatever amount it is. You won't get much more sales because you are selling lower end items.

The point is I rather sell an airplane and make a quick $70,000 profit than 1 pair of batteries and struggle to earn $1!

Some may want to debate that pricier item sales result in higher ebay fees but I been successful on eBay with pricier items and fees were pocket change, instead of a nightmare for the lower end item seller.

I've sold both low and high and high is the best route to take on ebay based on my own experience.

To be clear, I've been selling on ebay a little bit for the past couple of months. I haven't been buying items specifically for ebay, but I've been buying storage units at auction and usually there are some items that just work best for ebay. My favorite was some magazines having to do with marijuana. Apparently people collect those, so I listed a lot of 8 of them and got $25! Who would have thought!?!?!

But if I buy items specifically for ebay, I'd like to have the best of both worlds: low purchse cost for me, and a high price point for the item. How do you do this? By building value in the listing! I don't want to sound like a jackal, because I haven't done this yet so I can't really talk, but I think it could work well. MSRP is what the manufacturer in China tells me I should sell it for. When you're negotiating over price, they will tell you some crazy high numbers. So obviously this is for sale for 90% off MSRP. Why not point that out? And don't forget how when you're wearing the item, people will treat you with more respect, and the ladies are going to love it. Insert video of guy talking about how many girls wants to dance with him when he was wearing the item. And what about bonuses? Oh yes, you get a bonus, why? Because the factory was in financial distress and we got a limited quantity of this bonus item for a song (and a dance, don't ask!) and we want to thank you for your business!

I've read cashvertising. I'm just really surprised not to see cashvertising put to use on ebay.

Another thing: Where is the sex appeal? I'm looking at lots of jewelry listings, and I don't see any sex appeal in there. Come on, that has got to be the primary reason people buy jewelry. Men buy it for women in anticipation of reciprocation, and women buy it to wear as an adornment. The other big reason people buy jewelry is because it is a status symbol, and this is very closely connected with sex appeal, but I actually don't see the ads appealing to either of these.

I agree with the other comments about high volume and low margins. Also, eBay has changed so much over the past few years that I really hate using it as a small time seller. It's like they're out to make life difficult for the little guys.

I guess adding videos, would build up trust and potentially more consumers buying

Ebay jumped the shark back in 2005-2006 I'd say. These sellers aren't going to start selling more because they start talking about features/benefits. The competition is fierce and there are no barriers to entry. It'd be like if you put 100 people in a room of internet marketers with copies of mass control and tried to sell it to 10 people. These people know what the product is, they are looking for the best price.

In my view the only place for ebay these day is for people getting rid of old stuff...or companies liquidating inventory. For everyone else, time is better spent elsewhere. These big liquidators are not paying the same fees as you, so it's not even a level playing field.

I import products from China so I have an extremely low COG. And I find ebay just to be a huge pain to deal with. I can literally make 5x the profit by selling it on my own. And a much better option is Amazon. You can setup one listing for a product, stock the inventory, and then just let it go. Much, MUCH easier.

What you are talking about doing really depends on the buyer demographics. And that will depend on the catagory where you are selling.

The bottom line is to test your ideas, and see what works.

A lot of sellers *might* be doing badly judging only by the public results that are shown. But that doesn't show the offsite sales or benefits of using the site for advertising rather than sales.

I use Terapeak frequently now, but my favorite when I was selling was HammerTap as it gave the data I needed in an easily accessible format. I still get a kick out of sellers donating money to oBay because they didn't do the necessary research to find out if their stuff would actually sell ... and at a profit .

My rule of thumb was if I got everything for free and sold it there, would I still make a profit. It only goes downhill from there .

BTW, I quit selling there almost 3 years ago when the oBay mentality became one of screw the sellers. Their customer service at that point was a disgrace (might still be ... I don't know.)

AFAIK, seller complaints have almost from the beginning (I first started selling there in 1998) were almost universally ignored.

My point above is the type of things happening there are a result of s**t falling down from what passes as management. Do you want to sell in that kind of an environment?

I wish (sometimes) I was the type of person that could ignore the customer service issues, but I can't ... or won't.

Rant over .

Marvin

PS - Here in California, I saw a lot of comments that people would not vote for Meg Whitman for governor in the last election because of the many problems with oBay.

@Beatrice: Do you have a dollar threshold that you don't mess with products underneath?

Instead of competing with these poor quality sellers, why not contact them, offer them your services, i.e. offer to improve their listings by writing good display copy, offer to fill their auctions with pictures with no extra ebay fees etc (I am constantly amazed by the number of sellers who host pics with ebay and pay through the nose for the privilege). Sheesh it's ebay 101, my margins increased a lot as soon as my listings looked more professional. Charge what you feel comfortable with for offering your marketing services.

You can still compete with them, they'll never know anyway.

I had been selling on ebay for years and making a very steady income on the products I created. Then came 2007 - 2008, and my business was competing with people selling their products for peanuts.
I don't know why sellers insist on giving away the store or ugly ads, but I agree with your premise - sex up the listings and sell for better prices!

I used to sell quite a bit on ebay but the last few years I've just gotten tired of the whole platform. I've found better and more innovative ways to market products now.

eBay isn't doing so well in the eyes of even the large million dollar per year sellers, not to mention the people clinging to profit $100 a month.

The thing is, if you are going to export in bulk from China, you are going to be competing against people in China. Most things that people look for, say Super Mario Plushies, are going to have Chinese sellers selling them and they can get them cheaper than you ever could, despite you buying in bulk of 10 or 10000. Not to mention, shipping from China and within China is actually pretty quick. I can ship something from Yiwu to Nanjing in a day, and then its out of the country hours later by plane, sits in customs for a day, then circulates into the USPS. So, if you are undercutting Chinese people, can you afford to work 8 hours a day on eBay for the same kind of wage they are comfortable with? Probably not. If you are looking for items, find things that look good, that nobody else is selling - which sucks because you dont know what you could sell something for. Another tip, sell above $25. It's nearly impossible to really profit on anything less. Hell, if you sell an item for $9.99 on eBay, eBay takes 30 something percent! Also, if you dont want to buy in bulk... go on eBay, buy from a Chinese seller, and resell the item once you get it for a couple bucks more because people do buy from sellers from their own country, but not nearly as much as you might think.

Lets not mention, eBay is pretty much forcing you to offer free shipping which is risky, the USPS is getting horribly unreliable (now I ship through FedEx and UPS) - if you don't, your account WILL be hit by a low DSR score which will cause eBay to suspend and delete your account.

Other sellers are becoming cut-throat. I was selling Anime items that were completely legit, eBay had all of my supplier information, but because eBay is so automated, it doesn't take much for a competing seller to create a couple buyers accounts and report your item as being fake or bootleg.

eBay just doesn't offer much of a platform that you can build a big consistent business anymore, and they don't care.

I've been a seller on eBay for over 5 years, and with the recent changes, my business has dropped so drastically that I'm thinking of leaving it completely.

My services have always been around $100-$150, so I was never a huge volume seller, but I still made more than enough to qualify as a power seller, and for about a year, a "top rated" seller. But over time I lost my top rated seller status due to a lack of sales volume. (Keep in mind I have had PERFECT feedback since opening my seller account 5 years ago.) I far surpassed the required earnings amount to be a power seller, but since I didn't sell a certain amount of items over the course of a year, I lost both my power and top rated seller status.

After losing my status, my listings fell to the bottom of the last pages when searching for my keywords, effectively killing my business on eBay. The ironic thing is, if I ever want to get my status back, I have to increase my sales volume. Which is IMPOSSIBLE since I'm no longer anywhere near the first page of search results.

This has to be driving sellers away. It's a shame that legitimate, long time sellers are getting treated like this. My eBay sales have essentially dropped 70-80% since losing my status. Yet here I am, perfect feedback after 5 years. At the bottom of the pile. Losing out to sellers who undercut and offer ridiculous promises just to sell a high volume.

My primary business on eBay is (was?) web design and SEO. How can I compete when sellers are offering websites for 99 cents, and I'm offering them for $100? It's impossible. My clients are always impressed with my level of service and attention. Yet apparently I'm not good enough for eBay, since I don't scam everyone by selling 99 cent websites that are sold over and over and over and over again.

Ugh, enough venting. Sorry everyone.

Wow.

@ JSProjects : I know what it's like man. It sucks. It sucks even more
because eBay -- before it got to big for it's own good -- was actually
a good way to make money.

The system the way it was worked. The treatment between buyers &
sellers were about balanced. PayPal didn't have silly rules like putting
21 day holds on money you can't use to re-invest long after the item
was shipped.

The more "new" changes they made -- the worse the experience. I
still remember the 2-3 months when everything went haywire and ebay
did a "ebay slap" (when there wasn't one needed in the first place).

@ Dan C. Rinnert: I agree. Sellers would sell their products as a loss
leader hoping they would actually make a profit on the back-end with
the same customer...

little did they know most ebay buyers (myself included) were buyers
out of convenience. I've never purchased from one ebay seller more
than once out of loyalty. I did it only because they just so happened
to be listing the item I want in the moment at that time.

But, I give sellers credit for "trying" because it could have worked and
that seller would have made a fortune.

@ as for me: eBay is hard to do business with. They make it difficult
to work with them and treat MANY of their sellers as CRIMINALS who
rip off their buyers -- those people are the small minority.

I LOVE buying from ebay. But my experience SELLING on eBay (as of
now) is more of a hate relationship. I'm confident eBay will get back
to it's roots. The way it was BEFORE they hiked up their percentage
fee's. The way it was BEFORE they went too corporate.

Only time will tell, but I'm not looking forward to it because I wouldn't
count on building a business around any one elses model buy my own.

I don't want to go off-topic on this, but this is a common IM problem.

People don't realize that every page is a landing page, and they often just put filler on pages. They hire the cheapest person possible to insert keywords in text that barely makes sense, with no concept that a page needs to be filled with persuasive sales copy to convert.

That is the downside of so many cheap content writers, particularly those offshore, but others too. They may be able to write some English, but they don't understand the psychology required to motivate people to buy in the this culture, where so much stuff is being sold. IM people don't seem to get it it either... they want 500 articles with 500 words each for $500 and then wonder why their sales suck. There is no magic in articles themselves, only power in words that persuade.

I suspect the same thing is happening on eBay. People are just putting products on display, but are making no real effort to sell them.

I've heard that there are too many sellers on eBay to make it worth it. However, I have noticed that there are powersellers who have gotten over this hump as the years have gone by. I'm not what their secret is, but they have found a way to have a profitable business, despite the competition.

I hate to say this guys, because I too disliked all the changes oBay made, but the truth is I think they just took their business to the 80/20 rule, what I call Parrette's Principle which is basically that 90 percent of your customers will generate 5 percent of your results. Invert Parrette's Principle and then you have 5 percent of your customers supplying 90 percent of your profits.

(Yes, I know it's Pareto, but with all this talk of ebay slaps I couldn't help but think of the old NCIS Gibbs slap and well, there you go! An explanation of how 90 percent of the work gets done and then the boss shows up asking why it's taking so long to get results!) (And yes, I know I've left off the last 5 percent, but it's eaten up by oBay miscellaneous fees anyway!)

I think that oBay eliminated 90 percent of their customers (the sellers) because they just didn't think they were worth the trouble to keep them. That MUST be what happened, it's the result they got, and it's obvious customer service means nothing to them. If they had longed for any other result they wouldn't have slapped their nasty changes in so often.

It's gotten so bad till now when I buy something I just automatically leave positive feedback, before I've even gotten the product, even if later I've been ripped off. Doesn't make a bit of difference. How do I know? I put positive feedback on a guy, then when the product showed up, it was not as advertised. I logged a complaint in oBay, they immediately closed it down and referred me to Paypal. Since he provided me something that was used and I could prove it by the fact that it would normally require a 3rd party to activate the devise and they refused due to an outstanding balance (and I had chat transcripts with date and time) and the ad said "new" then Paypal gave me the money back.

Why did I leave positive feedback for this guy? Call it my futile form of protest; feedback now means nothing if sellers cannot leave it for buyers. And a lot of sellers have automatic feedback generation so as soon as I leave my positive their auto-system leaves me one back. Insane system, that oBay, isn't it?

Read my sig file below to understand the true nature of oBay. Their business model of messing about the majority of their paying customers that made them great is one of those infinite things Einstein once talked about (I'm talking about the customers paying oBay directly, the sellers). And I'm pretty sure we're not talking about the universe here.

A post (seen in the first response) that was made about 2 1/2 years ago pretty much spelled out the powers that be and their attitude towards the smaller sellers. In retrospect, it was unfortunately only too accurate.

I only offer it as an interesting look at the times when many of us saw the company as a declining opportunity for small sellers.

Marvin