We know that upwards of 17 million unique visitors log on to eBay each month which equates to one in two online buyers in the UK. eBay’s share of total UK online shopping visits runs at about 15% according to Experian Hitwise (August 11, 2012). The question that’s not asked too often is how many people sell on the site?
eBay claim there are around 190,000 businesses registered on eBay UK, but up until today I’ve never seen a total figure for how many people sell on eBay on a monthly basis. Now eBay have revealed the figure and it’s an astounding 4 million plus eBay users listing at least one item each and every month.
Fashion is unsurprisingly a big category for sellers with 40,000 businesses trading within the fashion category and a further 600,000 consumer sellers. Over 4.5 million shoppers visit the eBay fashion category every month.
The number of consumer sellers is doubtless driven by eBay’s mobile app. Around 40% of all sales on eBay are now purchased on mobile devices and it only takes around a minute to list a product via a mobile phone – much faster than through the website.
eBay Motors alone has more than 25 million listings and 240,000 cars and motorcycles for sale. 3.5 million unique visitors per month to buy and sell new, unique and used items on eBay Motors. Don’t think that eBay Motors is full of items which are too high priced for eBay Mobile buyers – Two of the most expensive items bought on eBay mobile in the UK were a Porsche 911 Carrera and Land Rover Evoque both being purchased for around £40,000.
Between business and consumer sellers there are now some 60 million live listings on eBay UK, a number which has tripled from 20 million in 2009.
I have to say 4 million sellers a month is a massive number. With around 60 million people in the UK that equates to almost 7% of the UK population selling on eBay. Although business sellers are likely to be pretty stable, the percentage of consumer sellers is likely to be much higher over the course of a year as many will be occasional sellers only listing every few months.
5 Responses
Hard to imagine so many sellers 4 mill, 7% of the UK population. Perhaps this figure includes sellers outside of the UK listing on eBay UK?
Intresting stuff, I guess the amount of private listings go up as the month goes on when people start running out of money before pay day??
Is it unique accounts or unique users?
” only takes around a minute to list a product via a mobile phone – much faster than through the website.”
Why is the website method so mindnumbingly slow?