Bloglines
Will eBay Remain King of the Hill?
Do you remember as a child playing “King of the Hill?” How much fun was it to beat everyone else to the top! I can still feel the excitement as I pulled myself up that hill ahead of everyone else. But, once you were the King, and everyone else was trying to pull you down, it wasn’t nearly as much fun. I think that is where eBay is at the present time. They are in a position of having to defend themselves from newcomers.
I have been using eBay almost since its inception, and their changes have been in the process of capturing more and more of the market each year. This has been accomplished by acquiring their competitors, and by an increase in their fee structure.
This has proven to be very successful for the company, but now, they are seeing new competition on the horizon. Companies like “OnlineAuction.com” have introduced the no listing fee format, and it is catching on. Should this matter?
I believe it does matter, because in my humble opinion, the number of unfinished listings, meaning unsold listings, will be eBay’s undoing unless they change their policy. Sellers will soon realize that they are losing far too much money on uncompleted sales in listing fees that can’t be made up by the profits on their completed sales.
eBay has tried to combat this by encouraging sellers to list their items without reserves, so that most of the sales will be completed. This, however, puts the seller at a disadvantage, because they can’t protect their items from selling at a price that isn’t acceptable to them. eBay has encouraged this is by making the reserve price too expensive to use.
I have some thoughts of my own about all of this. Call them my predictions, if you want, or just one man’s opinion. But, I believe eBay offered the month of September with no listing fees to see if the increase in final value fees would offset their losses in listing fees. I’m predicting that eBay will soon eliminate all listing fees. Why? For months now, they have been inching up all of their other fees, the ones outside of the listing fee itself. Things like gallery photos and listing style fees just to name a couple. Their other service fees, such as PayPal, Pro Stores and eBay Stores, have also increased. If they can maintain their profit margins, without charging a listing fee and increase the number of listings, I think this will give them what they’re looking for.
This would be a huge blow to other companies trying to compete. I am not sure that other companies who have chosen this route could survive. And, eBay can’t continue to increase their profits each month if competition offers the seller and buyer a better deal. The only solution for them is to make it unprofitable for their competitors, because of their dominance in the market place.
My next thought and prediction is about why eBay has a “sign in” for the completed sales section. I believe they are considering charging for their archives service like AskArt, ArtPrice, ArtNet and Priceminer do.
I stated in one of my early “Guy in the Red Tie” blogs, that the market will always find a way to correct itself, and the companies that are in control will either change or be replaced by others. We’ll see if this plays out in the coming months with eBay.
About Daryle S. Lambert:
Daryle S. Lambert is President and founder of 31 Inc., a company that teaches wealth building within the antiques, collectibles, and fine art markets and maintains a growing marketplace and gallery. The company aims to create industry millionaires through its wealth accumulation methods set forth in Daryle’s book “31 Steps to Your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles. He is leader of the 31 Club, a wealth building club and community based upon his book, and is author of “The Guy in the Red Tie” antiques blog. (www.31corp.com). He resides in the Chicago area with his wife and son.
[…] about at Will eBay Remain King of the Hill? - antiques, collectibles and auction news, - Last Updated - 7 minutes ago Follow This Story Change Your […]
October 18th, 2007 at 4:57 pm[…] I’ve been talking about this present scenario for months now in some of my past blogs. On September 29, 2007, I wrote a Blog asking if eBay will remain king of the hill and made predictions on what changes might come and what results might come from these changes. You can scroll back to that Bog, or read my October 2nd article based on this Blog: Will eBay Remain King of the Hill […]
February 13th, 2008 at 3:05 pm