Trevor Ginn has some interesting statistics from Bear Stearns’ report on eBay.
It’s now pretty obvious why the fee changes to the DVDs and Music categories were made: listings in those categories are down 15% and 28% respectively year on year. Far from flooding the categories with “tat”, as some sellers have worried the new pricing will do, it seems intended to restore listings to where they were a year ago.
Other falls are even more dramatic: Sporting Goods listings down 36%, Sporting Memorabilia down 34%, Toys and Games – astonishingly – 42%. Does anyone who lists in these categories want to tell us what’s going on?
On the positive side, the winning category has to be Tickets and Travel, up a massive 1328%. Obviously all the problems with eBay ticket sales haven’t put the sellers off, and might even have done them some favours in publicising this category.
And just because it’s my category, I’m going to mention Crafts, down just 3%. Obviously the “I’m quitting selling on eBay coz it’s too expensive for low-cost high-volume” hasn’t hit listings here quite as hard as some sellers promised it would, though one has to wonder if the 74% drop in the Stamps category has the same cause. Anyone who sells in both categories (and I know there’s at least one of you 😉 ) want to enlighten me?
It seems that eBay’s traditionally strong categories like Collectables (down 9%) are making way for newly expanded and popular areas like Home and Garden (up 47%) and Business (up 40%), though perennial faves Clothing and Jewellery (up 23% and 28% respectively) are still doing brilliantly. Of course, numbers of listings don’t in themselves give us any information about the number of sales, or profitability: though it’d be great to see relative sell-through rates of the different categories, the chances of eBay ever releasing such information are, I think, about nil. But the general figures, such as they are, are fantastic: UK core growth up 10% (compared to US 8%) has to be very positive news for eBay.
One incongruous statistic stands out rather amongst all this selling-related data. I’d be interested to know more about “1% of seller account for 40% of negative buyer”: if that’s negative buyer *experiences*, then it seems that most of the trouble on eBay is in the hands of a few sellers who are persistently unreliable. This ought to make them easy to identify and remove. Which again, has to be good news for all of us.
One Response
I can’t speak for other DVD sellers, but the majority of slow moving titles that I had listed as shop items were ended when the visibilty and fees were altered.
Those titles only get listed on CLD’s and if there is a specific reason for listing the DVD (Actor in it dies etc).
But judging by the stats, I’m not the only one to have made this decision.