Summary
As the economy slows you would have to assume that people would want to sell Grandma's antique green glass collection and on the other side of the coin people would want to buy at a bargain products. Could it be that eBay is hurting themselves.
Analysis
Most people when they read this type of article stop at the end of the article. Don't this time, read the comments, they will provide a very real insight into what is going wrong at eBay.
eBay in its quest to drive profits is doing everything wrong from the prospective of the sellers, without good sellers, the buyers will leave. Fees have gone up so much that sellers have been moving to other auction sites that charge much less. Then they started to push Free Shipping to try and increase eBay revenue. You see shipping is not included in the auction fee eBay collects, so some dealers overcharged on shipping, with free shipping the amount is included in the sale price, so eBay gets paid. Instead of fixing the problem of excessive shipping they drove off sellers and the overcharging shippers continue. They also put pressure in a very quiet way to move towards online stores thus removing the small seller who has unique listings and many one of a kind. Thus limited choices in the long run. Something that made eBay a place to find anything.
Then they took actions that did in fact drive off buyers. For example, a lot of buyers of antiques are older and less trusting of electronic payment systems, so eBay started to demand using their PayPal system only for payment. Buyers who use Money Orders or Checks left. Of course this tied PayPal and another revenue stream to eBay, but at what costs. And to top if off fees to list products keep increasing. You used to be able to look all over the world at other eBay sites with ease, now you have to sign in at each country, thus reducing both products and sales.
Here come the other sites to compete with eBay. Offering free stores with a commission on sales only or listings at about 50% off eBay fees and some allow listings for free, just making money on commission on sales, and no collection of payment restrictions. www.ibid.net, www.ioffer.com, /www.specialistauctions.com, http://listityourselfauctions.com just to list a few.
eBay continues to change its format to make it easier to sell and buy, the only problem it makes it harder and slows down the system. It is almost as if we were going to switch driving from the right side to the left side of the road. It appears this is being done to increase revenue from advertsiers on the eBay site. But at what cost in customer viewing prducts for sale.
Maybe eBay need to move backwards towards what worked in years past and stop being greedy, it is starting to hurt them.
