Tuesday, February 3, 2009

The Great Plateau: eBay Losing Its Edge

In an effort to help my local high school in Thailand earn a little cash and expose students to e-commerce concepts, we started a small eBay business. However, we quickly realized the major limitations of selling on eBay.

There was a time when you could sell just about anything on eBay and turn a decent profit. Nowadays, however, increased competition and eBay fees, the perception of eBay as a discount market, and international shipping costs has made it very difficult for newbies to sell profitably. Our business never took off because of the language barrier, banking issues, and the flood of Thai style products already being sold on eBay.

It seems that eBay has plateaued and may even be in decline. The big businesses seem to be the ones turning consistent profits as the little merchants who do not have the high positive feedback or the advanced management systems gets pushed aside. In my opinion, all of the effort that now goes into being successful on eBay nowadays is better spent on your own original website. At least then you won't have to pay those excessive eBay fees.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

eBay has decided to cater to new buyers, the thought being that they really need to increase that segment of their customer base even though they provide no revenue to eBay. They cater to the buyers at the expense of the sellers who do provide the revenue. Sellers were selling before eBay and they will continue to find new avenues after eBay goes bust as its new policies insure. Google will step in and make this work. ebay, nice try but step aside now.