The Wholesale Forums

[greedyboy]

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2007/11/08/qxl_ebay_bid/

[Beefy]

"Yesterday also saw eBay post its results for the third quarter ended 30 September 2007. Revenues were $1.89bn,"

easy money!

[greedyboy]

Originally Posted by Beefy

easy money!

... or the fruits of their labour?

[Beefy]

Originally Posted by greedyboy

... or the fruits of their labour?

our labour.

[anotheruser]

Ahem. Before you two go blowing raspberries at each other, that was revenues. Not profits. If you had read on a bit, you would have seen they made a loss in the same quarter of just under a billion. That's a lot of notes to go adrift. They only made small inroads into the losses incurred as a result of the Skype purchase.

[greedyboy]

and they are getting desperate now

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y07/m11/i06/s02

Personally I think it's a good thing they are introducing

[MustHaveMobiles]

Not sure on the desperate tag but as people are more and more inclined to buy of the Internet without having to sign up or be a member it only follows that this is a good idea to capitalise on...

I have two mobile sites on the net, one requires an account and the other doesn't, the non account site takes far more for me...

[greedyboy]

Maybe desperate was a too stronger word. However I am sure they are feeling the pinch as other venues jump on the bandwagon. Despite selling a considerable amount on eBay it is not our main source of business. We have also trialled other venues which are starting to really perform well. but no where near the amount of business eBay generates.

But there is a 'general feeling' with many 'larger businesses' (20K+ a month) that eBay is in decline and many I personally know and supply (both UK and USA based) are heavily reducing eBay marketing to concentrate on other venues or their own website marketing. Some I know of are all but scrapping eBay in the new year other than a few website promotion adverts.

I personally am having a great time on eBay. The more I spend the more I make My sell throughs are much lower but my margins are more than adequate. In fact in one of our ID's we have trebled our listings the last few weeks and we have seen an amazing increase in sales despite our products not being seasonal. The downside is our ebay fees have doubled

[MustHaveMobiles]

Ebay as a consistent mainstay of income is a wrong move (some may be shocked at that comment coming from captain Ebay ) but the opportunities of start out and continued advertising at minimal cost made it an integral part of any strategy that I used to sell my products.

I still advocate the use of Ebay and run auction simply to get people to my sites, I even make a profit on their that keeps me in petrol for my baby

[nocturnal]

It depends on the products you are selling if you are selling work intensive one off auctions that generate a good profit margin ebay is the place to be simply for the number of unique hits - if you are uploading the same products every week then yes you should be looking at other venues such as your own web site.