back to article eBay endures revenue shrinkage deja vu

At the end of 2008, for the first time in its history, eBay stomached a year-over-year decline in quarterly revenue. And at the beginning of 2009, it happened again. For three months ending March 31, the online tat house pulled in revenues of $2.02bn, an eight per cent dip from the first quarter of 2008, while profits topped …

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  1. Neil Lewis

    Auction volume shrinkage is down to policies

    I've been selling on ebay for a few years, have a solid multi-thousand sales record and feedback at 100%. Ebay sales consttute a viable secondary income for me but even I have been reducing the quantity of my listings because of new seller-hostile listing policies. They recently started to dictate maximum p&p charges on some types of items. On the face of it, this is okay, but in practice it;s just not flexible enough and so many items I would have listed I now won't, because I can't charge realistic p&p on them and I'm not prepared to make a loss just to make ebay look good. Then there's the much publicised "positive feedback only for buyers" policy. I've hardly ever had to leave anything else, but now when a buyer clearly takes the piss, I can't warn other sellers about them. That rankles, so I've stopped shipping to many parts of the world to minimise the problems. That means less auction sales too. Increased FV fees are another problem. I sell a lot of items on commission for other people, and that means I have to reduce the percentage I pay them. They don't like that, so they don't give me so many items to sell. The list of problems goes on. Ebay is still a viable opportunity if you do it right, but it's not the route to sensible profits it was.

  2. Martin Glenn

    @ Neil Lewis

    Agree entirley, Although byt the sounds of it I am not a seller of your calibre, I although more often then not sell unwanted items via ebay, But I have found it is increasingly more and more difficult to make any money from the smaller items, by the time listing fees, final valuation fees ,paypal fees and postage have all been taken into consideration. I also do not agree with the postive feedback for buyers and have been shafted a couple of times by no payers and cannot leave any warning for other users. Think i will stick to my local classified ads from now on at least they are free to list under a certain amount.

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