Last month's interview with Amazon.com's Matt Williams sparked some interest from readers who were interested in learning more about selling on the Amazon site. Part 2 of the interview is available online:
http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abn/y08/m02/i22/s02.
Additional information about Amazon category restrictions is covered in the AuctionBytes Blog:
http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/2/1203469425.html
eBay sellers boycotted the site the week of February 18th to protest fee and policy changes. We received a number of media requests asking if the boycott was successful. Our answer: It depends who you ask and how you define success. Mario Vodopivec, the owner of sniping service, Gixen.com, made some buying data available to us. It's a tiny sample, but showed buying activity trended upward during and just after the boycott dates.
According to eBay, the boycott had no effect on listings. And, in fact, if you look at any of the sites that track listings, there was no substantive movement in numbers. Some media reported that listings were down 13%, but that's misleading, since the boycott started in the middle of a 20-cent listing promotion that eBay was running. The new lower listing fees went into effect in the middle of the boycott.
eBay numbers actually showed a spike in listings over the past day - to approximately 14 million - which caused some members to question whether some strange things were going on at eBay (http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2008/3/1204379814.html). We'll update the blog as we learn more.
So was there any collateral damage to eBay from the boycott? Absolutely. Striking sellers were amazingly effective at getting the word out to media about the strike. Past boycotts (even dating back to the "Million Auction March back in 2000) got the attention of a few media outlets, but over the years, sellers have become much more savvy about contacting reporters and using the technology available to them on the Internet. Sellers used sites like YouTube to make videos and put "faces" to the unhappy eBay IDs.
Blogs were besieged with people leaving comments, and our own Toll-Free hotline became inundated with phone calls from incensed sellers (a portion of those calls were aired on NPR). Yes, you could say that eBay sellers have adapted nicely to Web 2.0.
Seller dissatisfaction did not end with the boycott. The most controversial change to feedback is rolling out in May. Many sellers are writing that they're determined to find alternatives or additional venues on which to sell. eBay is not going away, but it is changing, and retaining the quality breadth of sellers that make it a special marketplace is going to be one of eBay's greatest challenges.
The Internet Merchants Association (IMA) is a non-profit trade association for companies involved in Internet commerce. Tomorrow, I'll be traveling to Las Vegas for IMA's second annual conference. For me, this presents a good opportunity to talk to sellers and vendors to see what they are hearing in regards to changes in the marketplace. Of course, I'll be reporting back in AuctionBytes-NewsFlash, so you can catch up there.
Thanks for reading.
