It might have been years ago but when I started reading the boards regularly, sometime after joining in 2012, the change-over was already underway.
Private sellers would regularly come on the boards complaining about the latest change and saying ebay shouldn't be imitating amazon, but should go back to its roots as the worlds biggest boot-fair.
That argument would just as regularly be countered by business sellers saying that 80% of the items on ebay were new and the 'boot-fair' only accounted for the other 20%, even back then.
They would also scoff at private sellers who dared to say that ebay wasn't playing fair with those who had made it the success that it was, replying that "It's business, ebay is duty-bound to make as much profit as it can" and "The only thing that counts is ebays bottom line".
Some were quite happy to see private sellers leaving, putting forward their view that the new "Shopping Mall" ebay was better off without private sellers cluttering-up search results with "mountains of tat and rubbish" and getting in their way of making more sales.
Ebay agreed and they got what they wanted. Ebay doubled down on its plan to totally reconfigure the site with businesses in mind and speeded-up the process.
If ebay were to release todays figures I wonder what the balance between 'new' and private seller 'tat' would be now? 90/10% , 95/5%?
But at every stage it pushed away private sellers. The biggest mass exodus, I would guess, was when Managed Payments and the loss of paypal was forced on them and to add insult to injury, with a tortuous process of verification of bank and personal details where ebay, nor many business sellers, cared to make any easier. (and still seems as difficult today as it was years ago)
Ebay (eventually) realised that the never ending supply of private sellers was drying-up but the only concession it made was to throw ever increasing numbers of free listings and FVF Offers at them.
Then came IS that further damaged the boot-fair private sellers. Then ebay's "Pay to Play" strategy which made it clear to most, what so many already suspected of free listings and FVF Offers, don't pay fees, you don't get sales.
IMO ebay is now nearer to being the Business Seller Only / New Goods site that they wanted and will get even nearer once the new HMRC Reporting Regulations become active next year and look where sales are now with that business plan.
To repeat something I've been saying for some time, IMO private sellers make ebay viable and if there are enough of them, then and only then does the site become safe enough for business sellers to invest in and make the site hugely profitable.
Without them there's no-one to buy the new stuff which is IMO why ebay is panicking and brought in "Free To Sell" for private sellers. It might save the day in the short-term, but long-term ebay is still the same as it was. A site that progressively drove private sellers away in their hundreds of thousands and without back-pedalling on at least some of those business-friendly 'improvements', it won't take long to drive away most of the new wave as well.
