Small Ecommerce Business Get’s The One Two Punch From Google And eBay In One Day
eBay Analyst Day
Much has already been and more will be written about the first eBay Analyst Day held in 3 years. eBay executives did their best to put on their smiley faces in an attempt to encourage the folks from Wall Street. I will not attempt to regurgatate most of what is already out there, however here are two things that I took away from the event:
- PayPal is the leading money maker of the company. Some of you will remember I wrote about this last August in a blog post. One of the things I found almost laughable was the talking point eBay made that PayPal’s integration into the eBay platform had risen several percentage points over the past 6 months. Of course it did! eBay made it almost (this is as close as I can come to saying Monopoly) mandatory. Who were they really trying to kid?
- eBay will now be focusing on the “Secondary Marketplace”. First this is not a term that has been used before that I am aware of. What it really means is the liquidation marketplace. Out of season or end of live product. It was said, and I paraphrase here, “We are interested in attracting those businesses that have stuff in warehouses that they need to dispose of”. This certainly does not seem to include the small sellers that have one of’s.
While eBay continues to state that they embarce the small seller, in my opinion the only reason for this is the increased search engine visibility they receive by “allowing” these sellers on the site. Once buyers are on the site they are directed to the sellers that eBay wants them to see, not necessarily what the buyer wants to see.
eBay told analysts that 2009 would be very difficult on the eBay site, only slightly better in 2010 and incrementally better in 2011 IF the economy improves. eBay also said that it’s focus is now on the current customers and less on attracting new buyers.
Bottom line is lower volume sellers are in for a tough couple of years based on the current direction of the company.
For complete analysis of the eBay Analyst event check out http://www.ebaystrategies.blogs.com by Scot Wingo CEO of Channeladvisor.com
Google announced yesterday, during the eBay Analyst event (maybe to hope to sneak it out there with little attention????) that effective in May 2009 there would be a significant increase in fees for those merchants using Google Checkout.
Again, the small seller takes it on the chin with these fee increases.
Colderice did a fee increase comparison on his blog, and I think it brings home the point very well.
Every company needs to make a profit. I do not blame either eBay or Google for making these moves. They need to do what they think will improve their position in the marketplace and ultimately their bottom lines. This is what their stockholders expect.
All users of either eBay or Google need to decide whether their businesses can adapt to the changes or not. If not, the answer is simple. Change your marketing strategies to other venues or payment options.
Brain Drain Continues! Is It Time To Punch Out At eBay?
Just The Latest Loss
Eric Shoup is just the latest manager that we are aware of who has “punched out” from eBay in the past 8 months. As has been well chronicled by Scott Pooler of TradingAssistantJournal.com, Scot Wingo CEO of Channeladvisor.com and Randy Smythe of MyBlogUtopia.com among many others, it appears that there is significant change taking place at eBay. Scott Pooler wrote a blog regarding eBay’s loss of talent and his latest post today which asks the question
Is the management team forcing new and untested technical challenges down the throats of the engineers just to make changes in a panic?
On my ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business blog today I wrote about the 28 % internal approval rating of John Donahoe CEO of eBay. I have to question whether the number of managers “punching out” of eBay is directly connected to the concern over the rapid and drastic changes ebay is undertaking or if this is just normal attrition that occurs after a change at the top?
Based on the number of employees changing jobs and the rumored impending layoffs at eBay coupled with the significant drop in eBay stock, I feel the answer is clear. Staff, users and investors are not pleased with the the direction the company is taking.
What do you think?
What Conference Will Replace eBayLive? Where Will You Go?
Now that eBayLive is a thing of the past, (yeah I know, 2010 if you believe in fairytales) where will eBay marketers, and for that matter all ecommerce merchants go to get the latest information and strategies? Where will you go to learn about the latest software and services available to your online business?
I know that there are a plethura of seminars and conferences, but the question is which one will step to the forefront for those that market on sites like Onlineauction, eBay, Amazon, eCrater or any other venue? Will there be an event that steps up and tries to fill the eBayLive void? I don’t believe we will see a company conference the likes of eBayLive in the near future. With it’s vast income, eBay could afford this type of an event. The eBayLive confernece was certainly not a profitable event and never was intended to be self sustaining.
Where Will You Go
While researching this post, I contacted PESA/ECMTA and was given the following information. The will be holding a 2 day event September 10-11 in Melbounre Australia, September 18-20 2008 ECMTA will be at the Inc 500/5000 Conference in Washington DC and finally ECMTA will conduct a 1 day event in San Francisco October 1, 2008. In addition, ECMTA advised me that they are planning on small regional events and larger Summits for 2009 but no dates or locations are available at this time.
Channeladvisor advised me that they are planning another Catalyst event for possibly April or May of 2009 but details are also not yet available.
AsWas’ RocketPlace event is scheduled for September 10-12, 2008 in Las Vegas. This event is focused on eBay marketing but also includes information ecommerce merchants can gain from no matter what venue they sell from. The keynote speaker will be Marsha Collier author of the eBay For Dummies series of books, and other presenters include Jay Berkowitz author of The Ten Golden Rules for Internet Marketing and John Lawson CEO of 3rd Power Outlet plus many other notables.
With the economy in recession, these events vying for your conference dollars are rethinking their positions. I believe there will be much smaller regional events planned for 2009 by the various providers but can’t help but wonder which conferences our readers and listeners will attend in 2009.
If you are planning on attending an event in 2009, let us know which one.
Listen in each week to ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business live every Saturday from 10 AM to Noon ET to hear the latest in ecommerce marketing news and strategies.
eBay Germany Limits Shipping In Some Categories
eBay Germany (ebay.de) has announced that it will begin setting shipping fee limits on some categories on the site. Here is the link to that announcement, if you read German. For those that don’t read the language, Scot Wingo CEO of ChannelAdvisor has posted the summation of the announcement in English.
This is seen by many pundits as a precursor to requiring some type of fixed or free shipping here in the US. eBay often trials changes in overseas markets before bringing them to the US.
As eBay is currently offering a promtional discount for offering Free Shipping here in the US, which by the way ends up costing the seller more in fees, it certainly has sellers watching this closely!
Does eBay Scare You? Remember Preston Tucker?
Over the past 18 months sitting behind our microphone, one thing has become glaringly evident. eBay has intimidated the marketplace, from users to software developers to many of the media, keeping them on a tight leash to discourage not only the voicing of discontent, but to hamper the growth of competition.
Now, before you laugh or snicker, do you remember Preston Tucker, the visionary and entrepeneur of the auto industry of the 40’s? He was responsbile for the development of many things we see today in the vehicles we operate. However, due in large part to the intimidation of the “Big 3″ automakers with suppliers and the power they wielded in government, Tucker went belly up.
This is the exact same situation going on today with eBay. We have talked with several software developers, service providers and even media that are intimidated by eBay. We have been told by potential advertisers they will not advertise on our program because we frequently do not support eBay in totallity. We have been told by media or experts we have asked to be on our show that they don’t want to talk about eBay if it is not in a complimentary way. As the tagline of our radio program states, “Objective, Informative and INDEPENDENT” and we intend to stay that way! One company told us “our product is totally an eBay focused product and if your program says anything bad about eBay we don’t want to advertise on your program”. Now before you say it, this is not “sour grapes” on our part. I will not accept any advertiser that attempts to censor our program. Certainly businesses have the right to advertise where they want and I do not hold that against them. In the case of the company I referred to above, I do honor their honesty. Many potential advertisers would rather tell us they have an interest in advertising with us, then never return our calls or emails. I would much rather they be honest and just say no.
eBay promotes itself as a venue, an open marketplace, yet eBay censors it’s users on the discussion boards, and has been hampering users from promoting their own websites, and now outright banning ANY attempt by users to do this.
One has to wonder why software developers have not made products that will work across multiple channels other than eBay. Certainly several ecommerce solution providers such as ChannelAdvisor, Kyozou, Infopia and others offer the capability of multi-channel service. However the VAST majority of software products available to online auction sellers are not made to work on sites other than eBay. Most of these product providers will tell you it is because the other sites do not have the traffic or traction to warrant the development. I believe there is some truth to that. I also believe that because these companies have placed all of their resources into eBay they (the product developers) can not afford for eBay to loose traction. I also believe that eBay would stop being so “nice” to these developers if the companies worked to make their product multi-channel friendly. This theory has been proven several times in eBay’s history. Most recently the Craigslist mess, but going back to the Auction Assistant software days. During the big crash of 1998 of the eBay site, many users of the Auction Assistant auction software begged John Slocum the developer of the product to create a product that would work on other sites such as Yahoo (at that time) and others. eBay saw the handwriting on the wall and thought “how can we prevent Auction Assistant from doing this?” The answer was simple,,, buy them out, which they did.
I do realize that this situation is somewhat of a Catch-22. I also know that as eBay becomes more the “Big Box” store of the internet, the small and casual sellers will find other venues from which to sell their product. The first developers that step up to the plate and make selling management software that will work on other venues will be ahead of the curve as eBay looses these smaller sellers.
I return to the title of this blog. Does eBay scare you? My answer is no. I use eBay for what it is, a FANTASTIC advertising tool to attract buyers, then harvest MY CUSTOMERS information after the sale to market and direct them to the other venues I sell from.
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