Today is the day analysts are waiting with bated breath for the close of markets and for eBay to release it’s fourth quarter results. What we weren’t expecting is analysis of the competition along with their current performance but perversely they’ve obliged – or at least Wagglepop have!
So 2,000 unique sales a week, or about 8,000 a month, just how many sellers (in eBay terms) does that equate to? Taking a medium volume seller with perhaps 500 transactions a month that means Wagglepop currently support just sixteen full time sellers. Contrasted to eBay though they would have to list 8,000 listings each, and I don’t know too many sellers who would happily run that many concurrent listings for a 1.43% sell through, it is astoundingly poor! In reality 500 transactions a month would need to be a reasonable value to sustain a seller, so it’s likely Wagglepop can support less than sixteen sellers.
They go on to compare Alexa traffic rankings with other auction sites, comparing those in the UK (with the exception of eBay and Amazon who are a quantum leap ahead) and there’s no great encouragement. Tazbar and QXL don’t have significantly more traffic, and eBid is about double, certainly not far enough ahead to suggest they have much greater sell through rate. Only eBid has three times the listings of Wagglepop with Tazbar about level and QXL trailing with a quarter the number.
The best that can be said for any of these sites is that if you have unlimited stock it won’t do you any harm by listing it and forgetting it – especially on those sites with no listing fees. None of them appear to attract the traffic to sustain a full time seller at this stage. They just don’t have the buyers required to give the sell though rates regardless how impressive the number of listings these fledgling sites manage to attract may be.
One Response
Sales continue to rise on Wagglepop every month. 9037 sales were made in Feb. 2007. The number of transactions a month that it takes to sustain a seller depends greatly on the average amount of each sale. My very first sale on Wagglepop was nearly $150. (and I’ve made a good number of triple digit sale there), so I don’t need to do nearly 500 transactions a month to do well. I have sold on Wagglepop for 8 months so far and have been pleased with my sales every month. I think that Wagglepop is the best off-eBay place to sell, and my store will happily be doing business there as long as the site is around. Most online sellers could greatly benefit from adding a Wagglepop store to their existing sources of income.