Amazon Outpacing eBay for Lead in the Online Commerce War!
I started this post on November 10th and decided not to post it to avoid all the gloom and doom I felt at the time surrounding eBay and the ePN. Well… it’s newsworthy, very! If you don’t care for a Why is eBay Failing post… click the X now.
eBay Losing the ECommerce Battle to Amazon
Heading into the busiest shopping season of the year, and during a sluggish economy where every penny and every visitor counts, I can only imagine there are not too many smiles around the eBay board rooms or conference calls this month! In the first time that I can recall… Amazon has surpassed eBay in unique visitor traffic according to this Compete.com traffic comparison snapshot! As a matter of fact, Alexa comparison is looking the same!
Compete Amazon versus eBay Graph
(Graph date ends October 31st, Nov should be interesting!)
Alexa Amazon versus eBay Graph
Why Are eBay Visitors Flocking Away?
This is a no brainer to anyone OUTSIDE the eBay board rooms…
- Change is GOOD, but not Every Other Month! It scares away buyers, it scares away customers and most importantly, it scares away your investors!
- When you Screw Around With Something that’s NOT Broken – People Leave! Just look at the success of other auction sites on the web right now… uBid, iOffer, weBidz, and several others are seeing record increases in their traffic and active auctions!
- When you spend 10 years building a brand as an Online Auction place, you can’t expect to switch up and find success when others have spent 10 years building their brand as the place to find low cost deals online!! Heck, if you search Google for “Online Auctions” nowadays, eBay comes in at 4-5th!
- When your organization grows so top-heavy and full of employees that you have to raise fees every 6 months, its time to start looking within.
- When you Alienate thousands of other websites that are driving traffic to yours… they send their traffic elsewhere.
- … Add your contribution in the comments!
Could eBay Be Penalized by Google?
One of things you rarely hear mentioned about eBay, is that they are a HUGE VIOLATOR of Google Webmaster Quality Guidelines, and if you dig on their site you will find it everywhere!
Just head to ANY of the category pages and start drilling your way into the products they suggest. Here is a page on MP3 Players…. Now scroll to the bottom and look at all the jibbersih text and unrelated links they have placed on the page. You think that’s for visitors?
Now before you say - these are popular search results. Yup, I know, and search results are a big nah-nah to Google.
This is plain keyword spam, hoping to raise pagerank of the words they are targeting. Try that on YOUR site and see how fast YOU are deindexed!
Why Do You Think eBay Is Faltering?
Comments are open…
Previously Published Articles You May Like to Read:
- Ebay Quickly Reaching the Same Level as Amazon!
- Do You Promote Amazon? If So, Clearly Tell Your Visitors!
- Google & Amazon Partner Up On the Blogger Platform!
- eBay Partner Network (eBay Affiliate Program) Open for Enrollment
- eBay Abandoning its Roots – Might be Great for Affiliates!
- eBay Responds to Hundreds of Virtual Layoffs
- eBay Says Screw 2012 – Declares Doomsday in March 2010!
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I have been doing my part to "Build the Internet" since 1994, when I built my first website! Since then, I have built hundreds of niche websites for myself and many others, focused on design, applications, ecommerce, search optimization and internet marketing.
As with all big or gigantic sites, the engines have been playing to them for a long time and I do not see them changing anytime soon. The keyword spam is just one of the areas that they overlook.
I have been interested in Amazon and before they stopped letting affiliates get paid in North Carolina I even tried to get a site going but the Gov’ wanted to tax them to death so the left our state. I will try again when they let us back in..
Great post as always Mark….
@ Otis –
Good to hear from you – Hope Thanksgiving was great!
In ref to the Amazon thing – its a pill for sure. Get creative, you can get around it…
Family or friends in other states like South Carolina, Virginia, etc? Its a pretty quick thing to get a bank account with free checking addressed to their home…
Mark
You make a lot of interesting points Mark. But I doubt if bad SEO was why eBay is falling..Firstly, I am skeptical about Google penalizing gigantic sites like this one.
No matter how bad the SEO is, it still holds a lot of authority (read evergrowing list of backlinks) and needs to be shown on top of search engines…The others that you refer to that have outranked eBay could soon fall back..
Secondly, Amazon is no better when it comes to SEO. Check out this link: http://www.amazon.com/MP3-Players-Audio-Video/b/ref=sa_menu_mp35?ie=UTF8&node=172630&pf_rd_p=328655101&pf_rd_s=left-nav-1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_i=507846&pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_r=13B6W1SGSHMDZ1PC81VN
Hover over the ‘Best Deals on MP3 Player’ to see the gibberish text.
Oh… Thanks,, I have not thought about that… will maybe give a try… and Thanksgiving was great …cooked too much and ate too much…
Glad to see ebay is getting smacked around. Go Amazon!
Thanks for the good post mark, I would not have know this otherwise and my day would not have been quite as cheerful.
Great post!!!!!!!!! As usual ;) But this one just spoke to me today in so many ways. As an affiliate marketer, as well as, for my husband’s business where he moves a lot of his product on eBay as a seller (he manufacturers wakeboard and boat equipment). He has been thinking of looking at other avenues for the auction portion of his business. He also recently launched an affiliate program through his retail site (with a very good payout LOL) so we’ll see how we do with that too. I have just started to set up Amazon links on my niches sites and I’m anxious to see how I will do with it. *SmiLes* Suzanne
Well
I would like to add my voice to the thousands, instead of sending 5000 worth of sales to ebay in November — I sent them to amazon… I am just a little affilate, I wonder how it feels ebay.
I invested my entire life into Ebay since 1997. I ran 8 accounts on ebay. I made very good money until ebay cloased all 8 accounts last year over a $1 item I had been selling since 1999.
After that I moved everything to Amazon.
The sooner ebay dies the better. They have been taken hostage and being run into the ground by a bunch of Harvard MBA know it alls.
I think the MBA’s sank ebays stock on purpose. They were selling all the way till hit hit bottom. The good sellers like myself got the shaft over idiotic, boiler plate response rules where no one is responsible and no one answers you and no one picks up the phone.
RIP Ebay. I won’t miss you.
Signed,
8 Account Ebay Seller whose highest day ever was $10,000+ in profit
This is a purely subjective personal observation. It is not grounded in research or quantifiable data. Rather it is based upon almost ten years of experience with both eBay and Amazon – as a seller, buyer and an affiliate with both organizations.
Brand and corporate culture are extremely powerful forces. I believe that the brand IS the experience.
With that said, my experience with eBay has always felt extremely adversarial. It has been me vs. them. Their current change with the epn is just one more example of that mind set. eBay has no tangible “product”. Their product is buyers. Millions of those buyers were directed to eBay by affiliates. I have virtually no desire to direct buyers to them any more simply because I am tired of being treated like a necessary evil rather than a valued partner.
This feeling is magnified by the experience I am having with Amazon. They seem to be going out of their way to figure out ways to help me make more money. Their widgets, ability to post directly to twitter, addition of the Site Strip are all examples of this. I feel like Amazon wants to grow their relationship with me and they value my contribution.
The contrast between the experience I have as an affiliate with these two organizations feels to be getting more polar as time passes. I am not even sure if eBay cares about this and that is really sad. I believe there are many reasons for the change noted in the charts above but those reasons are of little relevance because, as I said previously, the experience IS the brand.
Great post as usual Mark.
I agree that all the changes come too fast and furious for me. I cant even keep up with them these days. I got clicks to them last month and didn’t make a dime.
Thanks for the tip on the Amazon program for NC’ers!
Nice post Mark –
Not surprising and it makes me happy. The people that really helped build them up they screw. eBay seems to think that everybody knows about them and will visit them without affiliates help.
On Black Friday I was checking out Amazon’s deals of the moment. They kept putting a new item(s) up for sale every few minutes. Some of those items sold out in mere minutes. The more popular ones were things like navigation systems. Many of those sold out quickly. The funny thing is the Black Friday prices at Amazon were higher, and in some cases much higher, than what you could buy that exact same item on eBay for. And they were reputable sellers with brand spanking new items. So obviously the people buying at Amazon didn’t know about eBay, or they were simply caught up in the moment and thought they were getting a really good deal.
As much as eBay wants to believe it, they are not the end all to be all of the internet. Personally I am doing all I can to avoid buying from eBay now after the continuous changes with ePN. It’s kind of like shopping at Walmart – I don’t want to go there, but some things I can’t find anywhere else.
What !!!
You think Google will care about loosing the income it gets from eBay ??
Get real … its always been one rule for the big boys and a big stick waving over the small guys…its called Power Crazy ..it gives their overpaid office boys a feeling of superiority.
Both eBay & Google Adsense are renowned for closing accounts on a whim – keeping payments due to affiliates / partners ..and then never answering emails as to why the accounts were closed in the first place.
Will Google ever penalize eBay .. no way ….eBay has a legal team that will fight back ..and bullies dont like that.
@ Anand –
On the Copmpete comparison page, look below the graph at who refers the most traffic to the sites. For Amazon, its Google… for eBay, its Yahoo. I know on my own sites, Google accounts for more than 70% of the search referrals… so its apparent that they may actually BE penalized if Yahoo is their most popular search traffic referrer.
As far as Google not slapping around a big player – just google “google versus BMW”. Google deindexed BMW a few years ago for aggressive SEO.
@ Terry – Glad to bring a smile! I don’t wish failure on eBay at all, but they really need to pay attention to the pulse or they WILL be in bigger trouble.
@ Suzanne – Glad to see you stop by! I manage several ecommerce sites for local business… everyone has been pulling off of eBay for awhile now, including myself, who ran a +1million/tr business on eBay for several years. The fees and being forced to use paypal is just too much to make it worthwhile selling anymore.
@ SadolEPN User & EX-Ebayer – you are one of thousands doing the same thing. One voice is quiet, but thousands might be heard!
@ Jay – Great comment and right on track with the way too many people toward eBay right now. They got TOO big for their own good and became an overbloated, top-heavy business who has taken the completely wrong approach to building a sustainable business model.
You hit the nail on the head with eBay not grasping both sides of the transaction as equals.
@ Dave – I hope it works out for you and the Amazon program. NC sucks for the tax laes for sure, but I think its just a matter of time before a Country-Wide tax law gets passed. They want their nickels…
@ Bill – I agree that eBay does have some things you cannot find elsewhere, but as they continue to abandon their base… the moms and pops who put all the “IT” products on their virtual shelves, they are going to be nothing more than Amazon, but with a poor attitude… which makes them lose the ecommerce war.
Thanks for all the comments…
Mark
@ Geo IP –
Not sure what you mean by Google I don’t really think they care either.
When eBay refused to allow Google Checkout into their payment system since it would take money out of their Paypal pockets, the war actually began them. Just lookup “Project Unity eBay”… they pissed in Googles’ corn flakes long ago!
As far as being penalized… again, lookup Google bans BMW – they don’t play favorites. If you get overly aggressive with your site, they will drop anyone!
Mark
Ebay hasn’t even made it on Consumer Reports list of e commerce sites in 2 years.
Ebay is now nothing more to me than some long tail keyword content, drawing visitors to Adsense laden pages who pay better and you wouldn’t have thought that even a year ago.
@ Jay ,Adversarial is a good way to describe their relational attitude to their affiliates or possibly contemptuous, and perhaps now that will bite them in the ass (as you yankees like to say!)Just love that expression:)
I wonder if a reduction of traffic sent to eBAY by the publishers that EPN has alienated with the new payment structure has anything to do with contributing to their faltering traffic numbers.
I for one am sending less traffic to them, and will continue to work on converting more sites to Amazon and others, away from EPN. I’m sure the traffic I send is like a drop of water to the ocean, but it seems a mass exodus is occurring from the posts I’ve read everywhere.
This is the new EPN Quality Click Pricing fault.
It’s about time eBay felt the pain after treating their sellers and affiliates like trash for the past several years. I agree with Jay, that Amazon seems to want to HELP their affiliates. Amazon is doing something right, that’s for sure.
Very well said, Mark.
Over the past month, I have put up between 30 and 40 new sites. Of those, only one is sending traffic to eBay, and that’s ONLY because it is the only place for people to purchase what is being sold (it is for items that stopped being made decades ago but are still popular). ALL the rest of my sites are sending visitors to Amazon.
I’ve had several winning bids from my one new eBay site (the one mentioned above), and thanks to the new EPN system, all I earned was $0.07 each for the clicks. That’s it. Nothing else. As soon as I find an alternative site for sending visitors to for this product, I am out of eBay.
As already stated, Amazon has a large basket of tools they provide for their affiliates, and they even encourage requests. I really like their tiered program because I know where I stand in my earnings. Clear, precise, easy to understand.
Rochelle
I find the Alexa graphic to be very illustrative. I think it is interesting that as soon as eBay started talking about QCP in August amazon started receiving more traffic. And, when the QCP program was fully implemented, in September / October the separation become more stark.
I went to Alexa’s site and ran the chart and they are down 7% for the 7 day period. Comparatively speaking Amazon is definitely starting to breakaway in terms of traffic volume.
I think it will be very telling to compare the traffic when the holiday season is over. It looks as if there will be a huge gap in traffic with Amazon being the winner.
eBay RIP
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