What’s Up With eBay?
It’s never been a secret to those who know me that I am a huge eBay fan.
It started when, as a newly divorced mom, I needed to find a way to support my family while staying at home.
I had very little knowledge of eBay, having bought one or two items, but set out to become a PowerSeller.
Three months later I had achieved my goal.
For about a year I regularly attended one or two auctions a week, lugging trays of junk home to clean up, photograph, research and list. I dealt with an eclectic variety of goods, mostly vintage, and learned a lot about the manufacturing history of the United States in the process. I sold all over the world and my customers were, for the most part, wonderful.
Then I went back to work at a “real” job.
But I missed eBay and then developed a part-time business selling my own dollhouse miniatures after noticing the burgeoning eBay market. It grossed me an extra $600 to $1000 a month, providing me with nice mad money.
Even after the dollhouse miniatures market dried up, I continued to buy on eBay — usually picking up cosmetics, skin-care, designer stuff for my kids, gifts, etc.
If I could buy my beloved Nars Vitamin lotion at $30 rather than the $75 that Neiman Marcus charges, it was well worth it.
But now, changes in the company over the past several years, brought about by the mismanagement of Meg Whitman and then John Donahoe have totally eroded the eBay experience.
Today, when I ran a search on “CDHM,” which stands for custom dollhouse miniatures, I got a total of 82 results.
Just four years ago, I would have gotten over 10,000 results.
A search for another skin care line I like, which used to result in over 1,000 listings, now shows less that 10.
Out of a list of over 50 sellers that I have bookmarked over the years, not a single seller remains.
Where are the sellers?
It looks like eBay has somehow alienated them.
And weren’t the sellers their customers? Aren’t the sellers the ones who pay eBay’s fees?
What happened?
One Response to “What’s Up With eBay?”
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By: Twitter Buttons
I’m a self-employed single mom recovering from 16 years in a hellish verbally and physically abusive marriage. I’ve worn a lot of hats in my life ...from eBay PowerSeller to caterer to nonprofit development director to admin assistant to model to owning a graphic design business to serving as marketing director for an architectural firm to political campaign treasurer. This blog will chronicle my recovery, using my self-designed 2 Habits a Week program. Read along as I strive to become a successful Internet Marketer/entrepreneur, a better mother and human being, and achieve the best body of my life (not necessarily in that order). Follow me on Twitter (2habitsaweek)!
Yes, eBay has been driving away sellers like crazy, Ebay started as a fantastic idea that evolved into a great site, then the greed set in. Now with overhead and shareholders and inflated pay for executives that do nothing more then piss off the members that made ebay was it is today, they are just looking to squeeze every last dollar out of each remaining member. It’s sad really. Pierre should step in and turn the company back around to what it once was, a friendly marketplace where the average person could buy and sell without having to take out a loan to pay the fees. We have created such a site and although ebay is still king, we hope that they visit us at Ziing.com and see how an auction site SHOULD be run. We have no listing fees, free member stores, free auto re-listing, free auto “tweets” of listings, a great bulk loader and much more. You can check us out at http://www.ziing.com and see for yourself. Thanks and have a great day!