June 21, 2008 ebay & Beyond: Basics to Business from eBayLive
Live from the exhibit floor at eBayLive 2008 in Chicago.
Our guests during this segment include:
David Hardin from PESA/ECMTA, John Gilmore from MyAuctionSource, Chris Dawson from Tamebay, Vendio, AGenius.com, Infopia, winner of the ebay & Beyond: Basics To Business eBay Live regsitration contest Jennifer Aseltine, eBabes and eMales founder Stephanie Inge, Jay Berkowitz author of The Ten Golden Rules of Internet Marketing, eBay PowerSeller Peggi Justesen, eBay UK PowerSeller Simon Balch and finally IMN.com
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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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