@the_book_seekers wrote:
Neither can I, but this is ebay. The CEO has made remarks in the past about low value buyers and we are seeing the fruits of policies that concentrate on certain categories - vehicle parts, trainers (I'm sorry I just can't call them sneakers), luxury goods, watches, fashion, trading cards all spring to mind.
And it looks to me that concentrating on those selected areas patently isn't working. Those categories are said to be growing but overall sales are shrinking (or flat this quarter). So where's the sales growth associated with them.
The only revenue that's increased for several previous quarters has been PL revenue. A few sellers have posted that they get good results from the extra money paid out, which is fair enough (speculate to accumulate). But it seems to me that most only promote because they think they have to, to get any sales at all. So are effectively promoting, not to grow their business, but in an attempt to keep dieing (or being strangled) businesses afloat.
To me it's a ludicrous situation. Ebay is killing off viable businesses by denying them sales. Destroying private sellers sales by swamping them with promoted listings, effectively hiding them. Loosing all the fees derived from all those sales, in an effort to bludgeon fee paying sellers into paying to promote for a short-term gain.
Ebay needs to wake up to the fact that there is no longer an endless queue of new sellers. If there were, why are seller numbers falling? They should be being replaced from 'the queue'. It's not so difficult to find alternatives these days, so once gone, they probably won't be back.
