eBay CEO Meg Whitman on the cover of Forbes
There is an interesting cover story in this month’s edition of Forbes Magazine featuring eBay CEO Meg Whitman. Entitled “What Would Meg Do?”, the article talks about what Meg is like as a leader, the rapid growth of eBay since 2000, and how that growth is now beginning to calm down.
While eBay recorded a record $1.1 billion in profits in 2006 (according to the article), growth is beginning to slow in the first part of 2007. The article reports that new listings on eBay are down 2%.
Many are beginning to ask questions as to why a slowdown is happening. I have thoughts of my own based on my years of experience as a seller and consulting with others about their eBay businesses, but I want to hear your thoughts.
What do you think? Why are eBay business owners posting fewer listings?
After I get all your thoughts, I’ll post again with my response.
Fire away!
Corey Kossack is one of eBay’s “top sellers” through his eBay store, Koss DVD. He is also author of eBay Millionaire or Bust and creator of ProfitBuilder software that maximizes profits for eBay sellers.
May 9th, 2007 at 11:54 pm
There are lots of reasons why people list fewer listings with the main reason the eBay fees, with those fees you have to be very careful what you list not to over kill or you loose as we have seen many large eBay sellers go out of business due to the high fees.
Another possible reason sellers list fewer listings is because of eBay’s T&S team who have gone full force into some categories to remove any possible listing that has a violation, large sellers always fall into these violations and get kicked by eBay.
Bottom line eBay is now focusing on the buyer market and the sellers are basically left out on their own so large sellers now shifting their businesses away from eBay.
May 13th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
I think that because some of the online comparison sites and some of the big online retailers are allowing people to sell their goods online, it is competition for eBay. The price comparison sites also help people to find lower prices, which competes with EBay in general.
That being said, I think that the transaction volume is still tremendous on eBay, and would be even if they lost 75 of their market share.
Andrew Darlow
May 13th, 2007 at 10:26 pm
Hello again:
My percentage sign went away above-it should read "even if they lost 75 percent of their market share."
Andrew Darlow
Editor, The Imaging Buffet
http://www.imagingbuffet.com