Andy Geldman over at Web Retailer has put together a league table of eBay’s 1000 “top sellers” around the world. And it makes for interesting reading.
He explains something of the methodology in the post itself: “What makes these sellers the “top” sellers? Well, they have gained the most positive feedback in the last 6 months, and they are all Premium Store owners (or the international equivalent such as Featured Shops in the UK). Feedback volume is a useful approximation to selling volume.
Focusing on the last six months helps show who the biggest sellers are right now – it excludes those who are no longer trading. I don’t want this to be an illustration of how many eBay sellers have given up or gone out of business – it’s an unfortunate fact of life that businesses fail, and online retail is one of the toughest industries.”
Now, of course feedback is only an approximate indicator of sales. And is in no way proof of profitability, margins and overall success. But it does shine a useful light. It’s an interesting piece that I think is well worth reading.
What stands out? To me, two key things. We have some pretty big sellers in the UK (including the top spot in this study). Also, several really big sellers to the UK are situated in China and that may go some way to explain why eBay seems sometimes lenient on this type of seller when they don’t follow the rules.
It’s well worth drilling down into his results and data. What jumps out for you?
14 Responses
It’s not a surprise to see music magpie aka estocks top of the list.
Is that right? I didn’t know that.
So don’t send em to Music Magpie, sell em on eBay, is sage advice?
I might follow that one up. 😉
Thanks Elvis. Uh huh.
My recollection is that the Guardian did a survey of prices from “sell to us” websites like Magpie and the prices on eBay and found that prices were something like 10 times higher on eBay.
A quick hunt and here is Mark King’s analysis:-
https://www.theguardian.com/money/2011/jan/16/consumers-warning-recycling-websites
What strikes me is that it’s not until number 73 on the list that you see a 100% for feedback! Perhaps I need to worry less if I don’t keep my 100%?!
Which one’s “northumbrian”?
I believe that estocks, Zoverstocks (on Play & Amazon) and Music Magpie are all the same company.
Nice to know that at one point I had one of the top 10 sellers as a client. Too bad I lost them in part because eBay wouldn’t provide me the proper support needed to handle them.
Interesting article. Glad to find our account in the top 400!
and the top of the list estocks – turned over 2.15 million in the last 3 months of sales – with an average price of just 4.33! and a click through of just 24% – way lower than i’d be happy with, but then i dont list millions of items!
pile em high!
I dont think they have done their research well, check babz media on eBay, they have done nearly 70% more sales than estock, check here: https://feedback.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewFeedback2&userid=babz&myworld=true&items=25&iid=-1&de=off&which=positive&interval=365
it seems your right, babz has over 4.8million sale in 90 days, with a sell through of 99% of everything they listed being sold.
more successful than estock by miles!
And babz has under 5000 listings.
@Fio @Dan, you are right babz should have been at the top. I updated the article to correct that. eBay’s featured shops directory was used to compile the data, and it turns out it can be a little erratic.