Tom:
I think there are a couple of things you have to be careful of if you are going to use an increase in traffic as your sole predictive factor of eBay revenues.
1. eBay may not have updated its page view count. It simply says more than 600 million page views. It could be 601M, or 695M or even something much higher. What will you do if eBay changes page views to "more than 700M" or "more than "800M" next week? Auction counts are much more exact and are update several times a day.
2. An increase (or decrease) in page views does NOT guarantee a proportional increase in buying, in the same way that auction counts don't guaranteed a proportional increase in buying. Example: when I first started using eBay, I would go through every single item in Roseville pottery. Now, I primarily look at items that have already received a number of bids, or wait until the last day of the auction. Or, I simply search for specific pieces of Roseville pottery I am interested in. I still buy as much or more than before, but I am generating fewer page views than I did before. eBay's search capabilities have improved so much, that I don't have to spend as much time hunting.
3. Even if sellers aren't getting as many bids as they did before, that does not mean the items are not selling, ESPECIALLY for items listed without a reserve or for a low reserve.
Example: Let's say that a seller lists an item with a $100 reserve, and let's say that on average, three months ago, that item was going for $150 on eBay. Let's say that the seller now gets only $130 on eBay. What does eBay get?
Before: $2 listing fee + 5 percent of the first $25 plus 2.5 percent of the amount over $25, or a total of $6.37 to eBay.
Now: $2 listing fee + 5 percent of the first $25 plus 2.5 percent of the amount over $25, or a total of $5.87.
So, while the seller is now getting $20 less, eBay is getting only 50 cents less. |
