As part of the backlash to eBay’s new fee structure and feedback policy a lot of sellers are leaving eBay for greener pastures. This isn’t anything new. It has become an annual event every time eBay increases their fee structure. What is different today, is the number of sellers abandoning eBay and moving to other auction sites.
One of the more popular destinations of many eBay expatriots appears to be OnlineAuctions.com. Today Randy Smythe in his article Death Of A Thousand Cuts quotes an article at Money.CNN.com that says in part:
“OnlineAuction.com, based in Grants Pass, Ore., reports that roughly 7,500 new sellers have opened accounts since eBay announced its new policies last week. That’s a 15% jump in the site’s user base, within a matter of days.”
I decided to take a look at OnlineAuction.com to see if it might provide a viable option for disenchanted former eBay sellers. In all fairness, I didn’t look at every category on the site. I did, however, look at the major categories that I regularly sell in on eBay along with a couple categories that are popular on eBay. Here’s what I found:
- Collectibles category - there are currently 592 items listed. None of them have any bids
- Disney category - there are currently 110 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Paper/Ephemera category - there are currently 145 items listed. Only 1 item has a bid.
- Real Photo Postcards - there are currently 72 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Tobaccoania category - there are currently 134 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Railroadania category - there are crrently 27 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Non-Fiction Book category - there are currently 926 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Antique Pottery category - there are currently 145 items listed. None of them have any bids.
- Antique Toys category - there are currently 24 items listed. None of them have any bids.
That’s a total of 2151 listings. 2150 of them don’t have a single bid. Of those 2151 listings, well over 95% of them were, to put it nicely, pure junk. There was nothing there that would attract, or interest, serious buyers. The few serious collectors who might stumble across the site, will not return because there is nothing there to attract their interest.
For anyone selling anything within the Book/Antiques/Collectible niches this site does not currently represent a viable alternative to eBay, now or in the mid-term future.
Out of curiosity, I also looked at a few of the ‘new’ item categories that are popular on eBay. The story was pretty much the same. While the number of listings in each category I looked at was quite a bit higer in every case, the number of bids remained extremely low. Overall, I looked at seven of these categories. The bid to listing ratio was 2%.
The only people making any money are the owner’s of Onlineauction.com. While they don’t charge listing fees or final value fees, they do charge a minimum monthly registration fee of $8 for each seller. That means they took in $60,000 from those 7,500 new sellers who emigrated from eBay in the last week or two.
I’m not insinuating there is anything wrong with their business model, but I wonder how many of those 7.500 new sellers will sell enough to make their registration fee back the first month.
While, as Dan Smythe pointed out, there are numerous other auction sites experiencing significant increased growth in the short time since eBay announced their upcoming changes, they all have the same drawbacks. The vast majority of sellers moving from eBay to any of them will face the same problems as they will on OnlineAuction.com.
If the upcoming policy changes on eBay are going to affect your business to the extent you are considering moving to a different auction venue, I suggest rather than moving, you take the advice recently given by Marshall & Joli when they in a recent post:
“…….concentrate on learning how to sell on eBay so that you will be a success.….”
Photograph by Justin Hall.
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February 6th, 2008 at 4:51 pm
Hi Gary,
We just read Randy’s post that you mention above. While we didn’t look at the sites like you did, we are not surprised at all of what you found.
We think that these eBay sellers that are abandoning ship are in for a rude surprise when they think they will be able to make eBay-like sales volumes at these other sites. Unless they go to Amazon, or maybe Overstock, they are not going to be too successful.
Thanks for taking the time to do the above research!
-Marshall and Joli
Lizard Wisdom
February 6th, 2008 at 9:08 pm
I went over the onlineauction site in one of my coaching sessions recently. I only looked at a few categories, but came to the same conclusions.
One thing Gary didn’t mention are the comparative number of items on eBay.
I looked at the toy train sections and found 11 listings on the online auction site. On eBay there are currently 69,722 listings.
As a buyer where would you shop?
Terry
February 6th, 2008 at 9:34 pm
As I see it, the problem isn’t that folks want to leave, it is that many fear they will be made to leave when their lower volume causes the 5% dissatisfaction factor to kick in.
Here’s graphic commentary, ie., Tshirt I made to explain the situation. The design is all original, mine. It’s the irrepressible Baghdad Bob explaining the new policy.
http://tinyurl.com/29wf7a
or
http://www.cafepress.com/sanitymad
I sell on eBay as sanitymadart, doing fairy art dolls. The no negative to buyer feedback policy and it’s ramifications destroys the balance in transaction eBay’s business was built on.
The carrot is always better than the stick. Replacing the carrot with a hot pepper is twice wrong.
The better idea would have been to leave Feedback open for 30 days as a running dialogue between buyer and seller as they work things out. The incentive would have gone both ways as neither would want to be left with egg on their face.
The Star system won’t be used properly by all buyers. Most think any shipping cost as too high simply because shipping costs are high. Evidence is, even sellers with free shipping get a lower score on that star. Buyer’s think they are judging more than the seller’s effort. It’s their confirmed opinion they enjoy expressing whenever asked.
The most feared effect of the Star rating falling below 4.5 is being stalked by a predatory competitor who now sees the Stars as a good tool. A seller can be put out of business for months. Same volume sellers doing eBay with the hopes of someday making a fortune and being satisfied to simply make enough to pay a few bills will suffer the most. That’s folks like me.
Sandy
February 6th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Terry,
I notice that for the second time in the last week Skip McGrath is pumping OnlineAuction.com on his blog. I wonder if he’s even looked at the site, or if he just smelled the affiliate program?
Gary H.
February 8th, 2008 at 1:26 pm
The people leaving eBay for greener pastures will make some of the sites in question successful. I think OnlineAuction.com will be THE site that comes out on top.
One of the reason you didn’t see as many bids as you were expecting is the number of Penny Over auctions that end as soon as the bid is placed. I just bought three necklaces that way. It seems clear that supporters of some competing sites must think of OLA as a threat, otherwise they wouldn’t spend so much time trying to find fault….
After years on eBay, and hundreds of positive feedbacks (no negative or neutral), I moved to OLA.com. Here’s why: No listing fees, no FVFs, just a low monthly fee ($8.00) for which I could list everything in my house. This is a true auction format which means no sniping: A last minute bid can extend an auction for an answering bid so that everyone has an equal chance to win the item, and the seller gets the highest amount a buyer is willing to pay. There are several different auction formats, including Penny Over and Dutch (where a seller can list hundreds of items at once). Because sales needn’t be tracked for the purpose of charging a FVF, there are no restriction on seller/buyer communications. Sellers can link directly to their own site on their auction pages. A seller who joins at the Founding Member level gets a lot of free perks, including the guarantee that his or her membership rates will remain the same for life. Sellers on OLA have a strong community and we feel we’re working together to build a company that has our best interests at heart.
February 8th, 2008 at 3:56 pm
Alabama,
I will give you the fact that The Penny Over auction feature may make the current auction figures I gave deceiving.
However, The Auction Rebel isn’t targeted at eBay sellers as a whole. It’s targeted at sellers dealing primarily in antiques, collectibles, books, and other used items found at garage sales, thrift shops, flea markets, etc. For that kind of item, Penny Over auctions make absolutely no sense at all. No one in their right mind would use it because it would severely limit their overall profit on 98% or more of their listings.
One thing I didn’t mention in the original post was that I also looked at the closed auctions in each of the categories I looked at. While I can’t say with 100% certainty, I’m assuming items that sold with the Penny Over feature would be included in those.
Looking at closed auctions paints just as bleak a picture because although the link says “Completed In The Last 30 Days”, the results returned are actually all closed auctions from the last two years or more. While that might be a nice research feature if there were actually a lot of sales being made, it’s rather deceptive if someone is looking for a realistic evaluation of the sell-through-rate they might expect on the site.
As far as being a true auction format without sniping is concerned, I consider the lack of the ability for buyers to snipe bid to be a major drawback. I’ve never understood the mentality of sellers who view snipe bidding as something bad. It does nothing to decrease the final price a seller will get for an item. In reality, if anything, it will increase the final selling price in 90% of more of their auctions that end with more than one bid. So, I don’t view that as a benefit.
From a buyers standpoint, those that hope to buy any item for the lowest possible price, may not like snipe bidding, but if they seriously want an item, then all they need to do is bid the maximum they are willing to pay. If someone snipes at the end of the auction, and they loose it, it shouldn’t matter - they’ve bid their maximum anyway.
I’m not interested in selling my items at the lowest possible price. I make my living selling on eBay so I want everything to sell for the highest possible price.
I sincerely wish you all the success in the world at OnlineAuction.com. But, I stand by my original evaluation of it. It just doesn’t have the quality of items nor the traffic to make it a viable option for sellers in the genres talked about here. And, based on my 9 years on eBay, I don’t see it becoming so.
I’m on eBay to make a living selling my inventory for the highest price I can. Believe me, if I found somewhere else that I thought remotely offered me a better way of doing that, I’d be right there testing it.
Gary H.