Tony:
Onsale tried to make Exchange work for almost a year. They've now turned it over to Yahoo.
I can tell you as a BUYER that nothing comes close to eBay in terms of the number or quality of offerings for sale. I've checked out the others and have been vastly disappointed.
Let me give you an example: I like to buy Roseville Pottery. Last time I looked on Yahoo, there was either no pieces for sale or maybe one. On eBay, there are currently more than 800 pieces of Roseville pottery up for sale. In my town of about 100,000 people, at any given time, there are no more than 3 pieces of Roseville to buy. Guess where I go to buy.
I can also tell you as a SELLER that I wouldn't waste my time on the others. I don't care if they are free. I also sell Roseville pottery, and when I tire of a piece, there is a very liquid market for me to sell it on eBay. On a $300 piece of pottery, I pay eBay less than $10 in fees.
The only place I see Yahoo as having a chance to pick up some business is in the VERY low end, when people want to sell items for under $10.
That is because eBay charges a minimum of a 25 cent listing fee, and 5 percent on the first $25. So a seller gives up 50 cents on a $5 item.
Of course, if eBay feels threatened here, and if they feel that kind of business is worth it (I do not), they could lower their minimum or charge nothing on items under $5 or $10. (Personally, I'd like to see ebay stop allowing that kind of junk to be listed and free up some bandwidth and resources for the more interesting items, but eBay probably sees it differently.)
In retail, it's all about traffic. eBay has the traffic. Would you rather have 2000 people going by your store each day and pay $500 a month rent, or would you rather have 10 people going by your store and get free rent?
I've have said since the beginning of this thread that I see three companies as posing the biggest potential threat to eBay: AOL, Microsoft and Yahoo.
If Yahoo is to pose REAL competition to eBay, they will have to throw a TON of resources at it. (Of course, they have a ton of unused banners right now, and they COULD start filling those with ads for their auction service.
It seems to me that one way to see what kind of threat Yahoo is posing is to have someone on the thread start keeping track of Yahoo auctions on a weekly basis.
Anybody want to volunteer for that? |
