Amazon now more popular than Ebay

[Chris34]

It's been on the cards all year. It has been increasingly difficult to make a decent income from Ebay and in my own opinion it is down to Amazons continued growth. Whilst it doesn't prove exactly what is being spent, it does prove which is the most searched for site. I know people have bookmarks and all that but I think this graph paints a good picture of what is going on

http://www.google.co.uk/trends/explore#q=ebay,+amazon&cmpt=q&geo=GB

That's for the UK, if you do the check globally then it looks even worse for Ebay.

If you are trying to run a business on Ebay then it might be wise to be aware of these stats. Put it this way, it might be still worth selling on there but the big ship is sinking and if sellers start to drop out then prices of goods could start to go up (less competition) meaning it will sink faster as customers flock to Amazon to buy cheaper and sellers flock to Amazon to chase the customers (driving down Amazons goods prices).


Chris.

 

[JJWinst]

I'm not sure I read to much into that..eBay will continue to be a force along with Amazon. eBay are undergoing some massive changes trying to get rid of the 'auction site' tag they started out with. They are promoting the big companies and trying to make shopping on there more professional.

A lot of the people moaning about eBay are the garage sellers that can't compete against some of the bigger sellers, and whilst this may be unfortunate, it is the way of the world.

The best way to succeed on eBay is to adhere to there changes and try your best to make it work for you.

Amazon on the other hand is a different beast - Their FBA service is superb, the only downside is that any product which sells extremely well will eventually get snapped up and sold by Amazon themselves.

 

[Chris34]

There is a big difference between making Ebay work for you and Ebay losing customers in general. The two are entirely different topics of conversation.

Think of it this way, imagine you own a stall at a physical market, you know how to set up your stall to attract the customers towards your stall and interact with the customers in the market. You are the best at what you do in the market and attract the most customers. So out of 3,000 customers coming to the market each day you attract 300 of them to your stall

Well now let's imagine people stop going to the market, you will still be the best at what you do and you will still attract the most customers, however the amount of people has now reduced to 1,000 per day and you now get 100 customers coming to your stall.

So you can see it is a big deal, if people don't go on there in the first place then you stand no chance of getting a sale, it doesn't matter how good you are with making 'Ebay work for you'.

This is not a rant by the way, I'm out performing the general trend in my sector, but that doesn't mean it's not something that should be ignored.

Ebay are making changes, maybe they will bring the platform back in favour, but in the modern day age of the internet things can quickly fall out of favour and be quickly dead within a few years.


Chris.

 

[JJWinst]

I think Amazon is just catching up..As a seller I prefer to sell on Amazon than eBay, their FBA service makes everything seamless, customer support is 10 fold better, and I believe product search is better for the buyer.

What I'm saying is that I don't think eBay is loosing customers, it's just people have another platform to search/buy on now in Amazon.

eBay are trying to get rid of the whole garage sale tag and have attracted giants on there like Tesco/Argos etc so a lot of smaller sellers which built eBay are loosing out.

 

[Jayser100]

I don't personally understand why people have these debates about which is best, which one to sell on etc. It makes absolutely no sense to sell on one and not the other, so whatever the balance is between the two, just sell on both. Which one works best for you is down to many factors, e.g. how much competition there is for your products, and how they go about selling their wares on each site. Personally I sell way more on Amazon but I know other people for whom it's the other way round. Just stick with both. I am amazed how many people come on here saying they are going to quit eBay because of falling sales, and go to Amazon… DO BOTH, IT'S A NO-BRAINER! Maybe Amazon have caught eBay up, who cares? As long as they remain the ecommerce platforms of choice for consumers, you just need to keep going and sell as much as you can on both.

 

[techielab.net]

I really like Amazon, but what ever i want to search, first i search it at eBay!

 

[antropy]

I really like Amazon, but what ever i want to search, first i search it at eBay!

I usually search Amazon first, especially if I'm not 100% sure which exact model I want because being able to sort by average customer review is pretty handy. I have thought for years though that they could improve that by adding some weighting to the number of reviews. Currently if you have a product with one five star review it will appear before a product with 99 five star reviews and 1 four star - clearly not an accurate reflection of which product is more popular.

 

[Pish_Pash]

agree with Jayser...such Ebay vs Amazon debates are fairly pointless - just do both .....end of. (fwiw, Amazon - somewhat like the hare & the tortoise - from a very slow start have slowly but surely inched ahead vs. Ebay wrt my own sales...but other than it being a factoid, it's of little usable value !)

The biggest win of using Amazon, is their FBA...a case in point, I'm presently typing this from Brazil whilst on a 3 week holiday...& the tills are still ringing & orders are still being delivered back in ole Blighty thanks to Amazon FBA

 

[Chris34]

Well it looks like Ebay have reacted to it. Without any announcement or any information elsewhere on the internet, they have reduced both their listing fees and their Final Value Fees for business sellers by about 15 to 20%. This is quite a significant move on Ebay's part, wander if we will have a bloodbath.

http://sellercentre.ebay.co.uk/fees-business-sellers-0#fvf

Chris.

 

[Chris34]

It appears now that it's not a case of them dropping the price, they have dropped the tax off the price, doh, was looking forward to a bit of price cutting there.

 

[JodieVeeqo]

That's interesting. I find Amazon's UI much nicer than eBay, and have always gone there to search for items first.