There are many reasons why I believe that eBay has ‘had it’s day’ but two in particular come to mind.
Visibility just isn’t what it used to be on eBay. Most eBay sellers that you speak to will tell you that their product views just aren’t what they used to be. Since 2007, eBay have been altering their search algorithms to try and improve the results you get when searching eBay for products. However, every time they change something, they seem to just make it a little worse. The sellers with poor feedback and reputations often have products above sellers with good feedback. eBay recently introduced a policy whereby duplicate listings would be omitted from search results. They hoped that by doing this, the search results would be far better. Although this is a good idea, it just doesn’t seem to have worked. All I see when I search eBay for something I want is a long list of products that are exactly the same and from the same seller. The products that I actually end up buying are often pushed down to the bottom of the list.
When selling on eBay now, you have to accept PayPal as a payment option. There are lots of payment options for online stores and marshalls yards speaks about some of them. Although eBay claim that this is because PayPal is safe and secure, it is simply to get more money out of you. The standard PayPal fees are currently 3.4% plus 20p per transaction. This however, isn’t the main problem with PayPal. The buyer protection scheme was designed to ensure buyers are protected when a transaction goes wrong. Many buyers know how to manipulate this system to get their money back after receiving their goods. PayPal tell sellers that they can protect themselves by sending products via a recorded delivery service but if you sell low value items, this just isn’t cost effective.
In my opinion, if you have a product to sell, having a website like this car styling site or this trains set website is a much better idea.
