Over 50% of eBay sellers plan to stop selling on eBay?

Ina Steiner from AuctionBytes just released results on a survey of eBay Sellers.  Kudos to Ina as the survey is packed with lots of great information. 

The most shocking of which is what eBay sellers say they plan to be doing in 6 months… almost 60% said not selling on eBay.   Wow.  While its tough to tell exactly what people will do from surveys, they do reflect very much the current thinking of the respondents and it sounds like most eBay sellers are thinking about throwing in the towel.  What we typically see is a fair bit of eBay seller transition/attrition just after the Christmas selling season, so I’d expect the worst of it will hit eBay in the January/February timeframe. 

At buySAFE, we’ve see a marked softening in activity since the new eBay store fees went into effect.  The number of items sellers are listing for sale dropped deep double digits in just a couple weeks.  We’ve also seen an overall drop in sales/GMV as well, although not as significant as the reduction in listings.

The new fees are doing at last half of what eBay wanted – reducing the number of store listings.  So far, from what we can tell, it has had no (or negative) impact on overall eBay sales activity, so the second half of what eBay was hoping for – a rebound in core, hasn’t yet materialized.   Somewhat related, I’ve already seen a few eBayexpress.com ads on TV, but we haven’t seen dramatic changes on merchant sales.  That said, I suppose it is still early days.  My initial reaction from the ads I saw was that most people won’t realize that eBay Express is actually a different website called ebayexpress.com.   While it helps with overall eBay awareness, the ads I saw didn’t clearly make the distinction that eBay has a new/second website for you to look for new items.  Educating online shoppers of the new offering is clearly going to take some time.

Sheldon Liber from Bloggingstocks- I'd love your take on this.

Comments

[Ally]

I listed two auctions on ebay each for 9.99 plus shipping. i sold one item and by the time they added all their fees up I owe ebay 17.00 in fees. So not worth it.. How can it be worth it when I sell something and dont' make any profit? I end up oweing ebay 4.00 and no money in my pocket from the sale of my item.

I'm no longer selling on ebay I'll stick to selling on the craigslist.org it's free for sellers and buyers to sell and buy on that site.

[Scott]

EBAY EXPRESS IS JUST A SAD OLD WORN-OUT SHOPPING CART SITE BARELY SQUEAKING ALONG ON 3 RUSTY WHEELS....:(