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August 20, 2008
Many months ago, I wrote about how I spoke with my old eBay account Rep and was told that they would be slowly moving away from the auction format. (I cannot find the post though!) This morning, they made the announcement they are changing the cost structure to shift fees more toward the back-end of the checkout process, in other words… they are making it much more e-commerce focused than auction focused!
Regardless of the sentence about auction listings always have a place with eBay, its pretty obvious they are shifting away from them. I mean, in that whole press release, one tiny sentence was devoted to the folks that helped make eBay a household name! Have no doubt… over the next week or two, you will see more posts about eBay leaving its roots and it will be interesting to see how it affects us.
Why Should Buy Now Listings be GREAT For Affiliates
After a much needed clarification from eBay itself, we learned that eBay DOES PAY AFFILIATES FOR STORE SALES! That’s GREAT news for us. Even though the majority of listings will be 30 days long, it means we will have fewer and fewer of those stats showing 100 bids, 10 wins! Now they just need to include those listings in the product rss feed for us and its a sure hit for affiliates!
Essentially, all of those visitors we send wont have to compete for the items, they can just click on the buy-now button and we make the commission! eBay is taking the waiting proces out of the picture and will now appeal to impulsive buyers much more than in the past!
Fewer of our referred visitors will be going to BID on items, they will be going to BUY items!
Where does this Leave Auction Sellers?
First off, I doubt if we will see a mass exodus of auction seller leaving eBay in droves. I would expect it will be a slow process where more and more just start leaving when they see their items no longer being the feature, as they have been for years.
Up until these changes, store listings were not featured in eBay search results. Meaning: If you visited eBay and types something into the search box in the past, it would ALWAYS list auction listings first. No longer…
As more merchandise comes onto the site, we’re applying our search technology in a way that will make their shopping easier, faster and safer. Essentially, buyers will see the most relevant, best priced inventory from our most trusted sellers – all of which allows them to buy with confidence. And when buyers find and buy what they want for a good price, you win.
My guess would be that the iOffer.com website will grow in leaps and bounds for people who do prefer the auction style format. At this time, they don’t have an affiliate program for us to get into, but I also suspect that will change quickly! Taking a look over at the Power Sellers Unite Auction Site Countpage, the number of auctions at iOffer is steadily growing!
What are your thoughts? Has eBay shot itself in the foot trying to compete in the e-commerce channel like Amazon?
10 Responses to “eBay Abandoning its Roots - Might be Great for Affiliates!”
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I don’t think it’s going to send the auctioneers off anytime soon, but you’re right - it could create massive growth for runner up companies like iOffer.com, and rightfully so.
This shift could prove beneficial for eBay affiliates it various ways. I’m definitely interested in how this pans out over the next little while.
Thanks for the update Mark.
Companies Like Ioffer.com need to get busy making their site more user friendly. I had a rough time with the search!
Yes, interesting times ahead.
BTW - ‘ecomazon.com’ - nice name. Pity it’s taken :-)
Is it yours, Mark?
Wow, big news. This is great for EPN people and eBay sellers as well. As a eBay seller i get a better deal, although the maximum shipping charges for some items (ie books) doesn’t cover the shipping costs in Australia. Thanks for the update Mark!
seems that ebay is abandoning more than their roots. Just got the email notification that they’re closing my epn account (so did a lot of other people)… hopefully it’s a mistake.
:(
post onTechnorati about ebay -
EBay Just Wants to Sell: Moving Away From Auctions
Today, eBay announced a number of changes to its fee structure, which will emphasize fixed-price sales over eBay’s traditional auctions. Fixed-price sales have been growing at a faster rate than auctions for eBay, so emphasizing this business model makes a lot of sense for eBay. To do so, the company has reduced the price to list an item for a fixed price by over 70% to 35 cents and sellers can now list multiple quantities of the same item for the same price. The new price structure will take effect on September 16th and is clearly timed in order to increase business for the upcoming holiday season. eBay will also make similar changes to its sites in England and Germany. Of course, the last time eBay made changes to its pricing structure earlier this year, it drew the ire of its most valuable sellers, who quickly initiated a boycott. Now, eBay is moving to simplify the pricing structure that upset its customers so much earlier this year. Final Value Fees While the listing fees have been reduced substantially, the overall fees for a listing still includes what eBay calls a ‘final value fee,’ which is determined by the sales price of the item to be sold. These fees have been simplified, but also increased. Overall, however, this change in eBay’s pricing structure could result in substantially lower cost for a lot of eBay’s sellers. Consumers Don’t Want Auctions As Laurie J. Flynn in the New York Times points out, these changes are also driven by a change in consumer behavior online. There is simply less interest in the auction model these days, which, even though it might be very exciting, just isn’t as convenient as just heading over to Amazon and buying a product right away. And Amazon is exactly the company that eBay should fear the most. For consumers buying anything on Amazon is easier (and often cheaper) than going to eBay - and it isn’t loaded with the same potential for fraud. Amazon is also constantly making it easier for sellers to list their items in its database.
Well i looks like something good, but after all the eBay chances i am still really careful with celebrating this change.
Mark,
I can see the market pressures for moving to a more store-type experience but I agree it should be interesting to see what the auction crowd will have to say about it.
My first foray into ecommerce was selling on ebay and 95% of what I sold was at auction. However, and this is important, sellers selling rare and unusual commodities will be unaffected. They will still be the only game in town and will be able to use whatever format works best for them.
All in all, I think that anything that allows us ebay affiliates to send our traffic someplace they are more likely to buy right then can only be good for us.
Jeff
@ James -
LOL I wish.. its actually owned by Amazon already.
@ Christine -
You are #4 I have seen today. I am shocked by the ePN termination letters and patiently awaiting one of my own.
@ Jeff-
I completely understand what you are saying. For those with the unique items, it wont matter… I do however think the market will level out with a willing competitor for the auctionc crowd.
Mark
Sites that want to pick up eBay’s auction business have a long way to go to make it attractive to buyers of unique and/or one of a kind and/or high-end branded items. Most of what I sell falls into the collectibles area, where there is very limited supply of authentic items, and the bidders go nuts so prices are good. Sites like Amazon aren’t set up to handle this kind of merchandise.
Other sites who want to go for it will have to clean up their act to maintain the kind of safety that buyers now expect thanks to eBay’s aggressive security measures. Whatever else I may think about them, they have done an amazing job in cleaning up the site from undesirable, illegal, fake etc items. And even with all that there’s still a lot of bad stuff going on. On the iOffer site, right there on the home page is a “Tiffany” sterling silver necklace advertised for $19.95. Yeah right.
And the site just looks junky. I wouldn’t put my $5,000 Fantastic Four #1 comic book on there, nope, no way no how. So these other sites may be up and comers but they’ve got a lot of uppin’ and comin’ to do yet. They’re not even in the same league, much less the ballpark. But we’ll see what happens. This is just my perspective as an ebay seller.
From an affiliate standpoint, the problem becomes one of them copying Amazon too much and diluting their uniqueness and attraction. If they’re all selling the same new stuff, then it will become a price battle and the cheapest widget wins.
I’m wondering about opportunities in building relationships with CJ and Pepperjam and other big shops like them instead of with one big seller like eBay or Amazon.