ebay revenue down and still falling in 2025

[enduringclothingstudio]

 Not good for 2025 start either

[theelench]

You are correct   --  My apologies.

But it appears that .uk  revenue is still heading downwards while all other areas are increasing.

I wonder if using the UK for this experiment is paying off ?

[valueaddedresource]

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@ett1954 wrote:

@valueaddedresource  Thanks for the clarification.  Any news on when Qtr. 3 figures are announced?  If my sales over the last 3 - 4 months are typical it would suggest a continuation of this trend.  It is not only private sellers that are impacted in the UK although, to be fair, I feel there are a number of factors impacting this sales decline over here.

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@ett1954 eBay Q3 earnings report is on October 29th.

Remember that eBay has been telling Wall Street that the lower revenue for the UK was planned/expected as they went fee free for private sellers, causing a "temporary" drop before phasing back in revenue generation for those transactions via the BPF and Simple Delivery.

The BPF was supposed to come in early February, but ended up being strung along and wasn't really fully implemented for almost a month and of course the Simple Delivery mandate dragged out even more, so at least for most of Q1 those weren't in place and Q2 was a mixed bag.

With the way that chart is split, it's pretty obvious that the larger share of losses from that 6 month figure were in Q1, and once BPF and Simple Delivery kicked in, while it was still a negative, the gap appears to be narrowing.

So while the UK numbers don't look great at face value, they haven't (yet) made investors nervous because so far at least it is in line with what was forecasted.

If Q3 shows the gap continuing to narrow and the UK revenue back on track after "remonitizing" private sales with BPF and Simple Delivery, I think things will be unlikely to change and eBay will continue to stay the course.

Like you said, it's not only private sellers that are impacted but because of the changes eBay made to how revenue is generated from private sales, those initiatives are going to be most in the spotlight because that is what eBay has pinned most of the revenue drop on.

Since they don't report private vs business revenue separately, for now that "story" muddies the waters and provides enough a plausible explanation to keep investors from being too worried about those numbers.

That will probably hold for the Q3 report as well, since they didn't really put the Simple Delivery mandate into effect until mid August, but Q4 and beyond will be more revealing for the big picture of the UK market because at that point both the BPF and SD will have been fully in effect and so they won't have that excuse anymore.

[suelel1968]

@valueaddedresource Hi, you obviously follow this closely, but is that the whole story fo the Uk? In reality BPF was bought in to encourage new sellers and more revenue. SD was bought in to monetise delivery introducing more revenue. Promoting items should bring in more revenue. Promotional adverts and trying to get buyers to sign up to a case of beer etc was supposed to bring in more revenue. So despite the staggered roll outs they have lost Private seller revenue so much so that they reduced BPF and SD criteria and might breakeven or just about increase revenue by the end of the year.

But at the expense of driving their core business elsewhere which is presumably not why they did any of it. It's not exactly a model that they will be rushing to copy elsewhere. 

[valueaddedresource]

@suelel1968  good questions. I don't believe it is the whole story for the UK, it's just my attempt to summarize the story as it's been told to investors so far and the information that we can see reflected in earnings reports so far.

When eBay announced they were going fee free for private sales last year, they also said that they would be bringing in the BPF in 2025 to "remonetize" those sales and they told much the same story about Simple Delivery, saying it would be a revenue generator once it was fully implemented.

Because of the way they've rolled those things out, Q1 and Q2 reports didn't really have them fully baked in, so eBay has been able to stave off scrutiny.

Same thing with the new Promoted Listings attribution money grab - it was only live in Germany for the last month of Q1 and through all of Q2, then expanded to UK, Australia, Italy, France, and Spain at the very end of June. So the stats on that so far have only really reflected 1 full quarter with 1 smaller market in play and we won't find out until the Q3 report if/how it affected revenue for any of the other markets.

I agree that the recent changes to the BPF and SD criteria, not to mention anecdotal reports from sellers, likely indicates the model hasn't been working as well as eBay had hoped. We just don't have official numbers yet to really tell that story but next week's report will definitely shed some light on things.

[suelel1968]

Hi @valueaddedresource sorry if I came across a bit like I was challenging your analysis. You are right and I was just baffled as to how they can do all these changes to come out pretty flat on revenue at the end of the year but costs must be higher.

What is next weeks report? 

[valueaddedresource]

@suelel1968 no worries, I didn't take it as a challenge. 😊

Next week's report is the earnings call:

https://investors.ebayinc.com/events/event-details/2025/eBay-Q3-2025-Earnings-Call-2025-gE58GuuthS/d... 

[theelench]

I'm sure they'll make interesting reading, along with the CEO's statement.

[ett1954]

One thing is for sure; there will be no benefits for sellers from any surplus income, just the ongoing manipulation of the share price through the share buyback scheme to retain investor confidence .............. and of course the executives' bonuses.

My prediction; 

Sales declining, promotional and ad revenue up, 80%+ of any increased revenue used for share buybacks.  Buyers - declining or static by re-definition.  Seller numbers - undisclosed (again).

CEO statement: A few 'bumps in the road' being ironed out, otherwise everything going to plan driven by sellers embracing 'pay to sell' promotional opportunities and eBay's magical innovations and cutting edge use of AI.

[theelench]

Yes, there's always more road to kick the can down although it seems to be getting bumpier.

There was some speculation that the last year's final quarter's figures showed no real growth, apart from that delivered from carriers increasing their charges and ebay revenue and general background inflation.  Even the advertising revenue growth seemed to be faltering.

Roll out BPF and SD onto private sellers and what I can only describe as weird goings-on with Promotional fees for (mainly) business sellers.  I can only call them weird because I don't understand them, but comments I've read have not been happy.

Are the execs. getting desperate and cutting nearer the bone ?   I don't know but upsetting the faithful doesn't seem like a good idea.

The kicks down the road seem to be getting shorter.  The increased revenue from MP was meant to set ebay up for years of growth, the Vertical Strategy was meant to be some sort of boom area for growth, but ebay still seems to be scrabbling for extra revenue from the same small business and private sellers, the back-bone of the site.

I'm no expert but I was self employed for over two decades and through a couple of boom and bust economic cycles and I never had to continuously hammer my existing clients for lack of new income or customers, I used existing customers as the base to build from by treating them better not worse.

[lucy_farmer]

'CEO statement: A few 'bumps in the road' being ironed out, otherwise everything going to plan driven by sellers embracing 'pay to sell' promotional opportunities and eBay's magical innovations and cutting edge use of AI.'

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Followed by the CEO stating  'Building this company up into it's current, wonderful, growing, modern state has been the best part of my life 😍😍  ....🤢 .

.....But I've just been offered another role in another company (who obviously want to take advantage of my brilliant ideas as well! ) so ....byeeeee! 

(CEO jumps and releases the 'golden parachute'...)

[theelench]

Or that's just his excuse as he's been pushed to make way for the next magician with a wining smile, a better line in patter and another Grand Plan to keep the gravy flowing.

[moonlight-rhapsody]

"I never had to continuously hammer my existing clients for lack of new income or customers, I used existing customers as the base to build from by treating them better not worse."

Same here, plus the referrals from existing satisfied customers.  Do any of us still recommend ebay to friends or family?  I used to wax lyrical about ebay, but now my family and friends all know how unsatisfactory I find it now.  Sometimes they can't quite believe it, for example when ebay sides with the buyer over a INAD case which is clearly a scam or buyers remorse (the Case of the Gas Cooker will be forever etched in my memory), or when I tell them about the ridiculous search results.  I'm sure sometimes they think I've either misunderstood or I'm making it up because some things sound so unbelievably stupid.  As for Simple Delivery, nobody I know can get their head round ebay coming up with such a scheme and thinking they could pass it off as "simple".   But clearly ebay doesn't need referrals or existing customers, they've obviously had a huge influx of bright young things coming in on the back of the TV ads 🙄

[suelel1968]

@moonlight-rhapsody "the Case of the Gas Cooker"  Even Agatha Christie couldn't work that one out!

The problem with the "bright young things" is that they are so bright as to be scamming the system with empty boxes, sending bed sheets instead of cameras and returning different items at the sellers expense. Oh to be young!

[lucy_farmer]

'I used to wax lyrical about ebay, but now my family and friends all know how unsatisfactory I find it now. '

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Likewise. 

I used to encourage people to have a try at selling on ebay as it wasn't too difficult. ...now it's a p.i.t.a.

(And, up until very recently, I could help them out with 90% of the questions they had.... can't do that now. ☹️ My level of confidence in how ebay works, is at rock-bottom. )

But it does make a good example of what 'ensh**ification' means, when you're trying to explain the concept to somebody!

[coyotetower]

Tbh TEMU local is going to be the first real competitor next to amazon marketplace ebay has had so we'll hopefully see some backtracking. I've registered on there as (for now) there's 0% commission or fees for the UK. Need to be VAT registered but its a small sacrifice (for a sole trader) when ebay are taking nearly 60% of ur profits.

I've made good profits on ebay past 2 months but only cuz theyve been giving 50% off promotional pay per click fees. That's the way they want people to go now so obv they are just absolutely gouging business sellers for most revenue. It used to be minimum 6p per click, now its 20p per click. It's gonna defo be 50p per click soon. Whole company is out of control.  Never heard of a company charging u listing fees, gallery fees, final value fees, regulatory fees and then demand u to pay per click to even be seen by anyone lol. Madness.

[jonatjonatjonat]

probably fair to say people should do their research on Temu as to their business model. It is ‘fee free’ in a similar way to how the Buyer Protection Fee makes it free to sell I would say.

eBay’s issue is they’ve got businesses of varying sizes, private sellers, collectors and more that they want to sell on the platform. They can’t please everyone - but are trying to.

- Vinted works because as a buyer, you know, in the main you are buying second hand items
- Amazon and TEMU you have the benefit of knowing it'll likely be a new product and you tend to have clear delivery times. These platforms have their issues of course, but you know what you are getting

ebay....you do a search - what is it? new? is it from a business? can I return it? can I not? 

ebays issue is they are now trying to do too many things to try to please everyone. There are just too many variables.

[kh-urvashi]

Hi everyone,

We appreciate your participation in the thoughtful discussion about eBay's revenue trends and business strategy. This is a valuable analytical conversation that benefits the seller community.

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[suelel1968]

It's quited difficult to not mention the competition when eBay has decided to copy their strategies and ruin the core business. I'm glad at least one ebay employee is reading the threads though,  please feel free to take all the suggestions to Make Ebay Great Again (MEGA) and present them as your management. Thanks👍

[ett1954]

@suelel1968   The moderators are not eBay employees but work for Khoros who manage eBay's forum.

Only those responders who have a blue border and @ebay in their username are eBay employees.  Nice try though.

[suelel1968]

@ett1954 Did you just go off topic!