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I went into Sixbit chat earlier this morning. It sounded good until they told me I needed a Windows based computer or a partition running a virtual machine on my Mac. Agh. Any recommendations for a similar service that can run Shopify & Ebay that is mac or web based?
I was thinking of Fillz because it can handle both Ebay & Chrislands. However, I don’t know if it can import all of your Ebay listings with pictures & descriptions into it like SixBit can. I’ll have to contact them to see. I still need to choose whether I want a Chrislands or Shopify store. them. Chrislands also has a $250 set-up fee, while Shopify has no set-up fee. This is actually why I’ve been putting off setting up the store for the past year, but I guess I better get started working on it now.
Yeah, if I had started on this a year ago, the SEO and marketing would’ve been more in place. I’ve been experimenting with Etsy on how to do this to an extent, but it’s not the same.
Yeah, I can definitely see that if you’ve been following along since the beginning this would be no surprise. It is no surprise that once they were able to get the attention of the other shareholders, that this happened. I guess since it went from a matter of “when?” to “oh, it actually happened” that you really have to wonder what’s going to happen next.
I completely agree with you on your 2020 perspective. Q4 is fine and is nothing to worry about. I would probably say Q1-Q2 or even Q3 of 2020 are probably okay. It will take them awhile to separate Stubhub & Classifieds. Beyond that? It is really worrisome.
I found this article after I posted the others last night, not sure if you saw it back in January:
So, yeah, it is good to be positive & optimistic about your business and the future of Ebay, but if this is the future of Ebay it could be anything or nothing?!
I’m already listing on Amazon, Etsy, other websites. Diversifying is a really good idea at this point. I definitely think it’s time to get a shopify type store as well – I talked to my husband about this last night and he was like “I told you to get one a year ago!” 🙁 No matter what happens, the worst thing is to have your eggs all in 1 basket. Online reselling overall looks like it’s in a period of flux. The best is to try to get yourself to the point of not being dependent on any website you don’t actually own and call your own shots on.
okay, i see there are a million youtube videos on this topic already from the “gurus,” but i don’t have the time to see if any of them have covered the points of what i can find from 5 minutes of using google & quickly reading through articles. here are the highlights of what i’ve found:
What’s Next for eBay Stock After CEO Walks
a few paragraphs down:
The roots of today’s events reach back to a January letter to the eBay board from Elliott Management, in which the activist hedge-fund firm asserted that the stock offered 75% to 100% upside—or $55-$63 a share—with some restructuring of the business. (Then in the low $30s, the stock has moved up to the high $30s.)
okay, lets find the letter:
Elliott Management Sends Letter to Board of Directors of eBay
there is a link in the article to read the ENTIRE letter, but the website is now down. ugh. lets try to read very quickly through this to see what is relevant to us as ebay sellers:
II. Revitalizing Marketplace: eBay’s Marketplace is a strategically valuable asset that has weathered prolonged, self-inflicted misexecution. Management should turn its singular attention to growing and strengthening Marketplace.
III. Operational Improvements and Margin Expansion: Today eBay suffers from an inefficient organizational structure, wasteful spend and a misallocation of resources. By increasing operational efficiency, eBay can free up capital to invest in capability- and revenue-enhancing activities.
okay, what does this entail?
As a successful third-party marketplace, eBay thrived through the dot-com crash, the 2008-2009 recession and the more recent retail challenges because it has demonstrated resilience in the face of changing market demands. This includes long ago shedding its original reliance on used goods or auctions. While surprising to many, only 10% of items sold on eBay today are sold via auction, and fewer than 20% of items sold are used goods. As a result of its ability to successfully evolve and grow with the broader e-commerce market, eBay today is the world’s second largest online retailer outside of mainland China,
(me: okay, i am sort of in a panic reading over how they EMPHASIZE that only 10% of items sold are on auction, and less than 20% are used. i realize that this is a way to show how much ebay has “progressed” over the past 2 decades, but ah no, i don’t need to see them outwardly saying that in a letter that is going to set the course for the future of the site).
blah blah blah, walls of text saying that “we love you ebay so much, but you need to change”
Moreover, strong technical execution is particularly necessary today as eBay is undertaking several mission-critical initiatives, including the rapid growth of Promoted Listings and the move to intermediate payments. These represent tremendous upside opportunities as Promoted Listings has the ability to dramatically scale from its current size while Managed Payments will develop into a multi-billion dollar revenue opportunity with substantial profits. So far, eBay’s execution of these initiatives has been inconsistent from the onset, with issues ranging from a lack of PayPal support for Managed Payments to the inadequate reporting and analytics functionalities on Promoted Listings. Fortunately, all of these issues are fixable and through an aggressive emphasis on operational execution and continued enhancements to the platform, eBay will be able to successfully capture these significant and near-term value-creation opportunities.
so, they want to put MORE emphasis on promoted listings in the future. wonder how that will go with the large number of sellers jumping ship from PL over the past week? also interested in their interest in managed payments.
Its success was evidence that eBay was a natural platform for continued, innovative expansion into new and growing markets. That same innovative energy has not kept pace in recent years. Other successful, niche category marketplaces, including Etsy (~$7 billion market cap), Wayfair (~$9 billion market cap), Reverb, LetGo, OfferUp, The RealReal, and countless others, have succeeded where eBay was well-positioned to win. Interestingly, many of these were started by or are currently run by former eBay executives – accomplishments that should have been achieved within eBay.
We highlight these missed opportunities as a strong indication that significant market potential remains. eBay’s platform provides a truly unique forum for innovation which can and should be leveraged to expand the universe of what is transacted on its Marketplace. While we have no doubt that eBay is focused on this, we believe that more needs to be done given the stakes. We suggest that this be a Board-level priority, with key directors working alongside Management on a plan to invest and win in new products and verticals. We believe eBay should engage in a full operational review of how it spends its development funds and undertake rigorous analysis of the ROI of the investments to ensure it is best allocating its investment – both internal development spend as well as the potential for targeted M&A. With the scale of its resources, fewer distractions and proper attention on the matter, eBay can succeed in new growth vectors.
what new sort of items should be sold on ebay? interesting.
The Plan calls for a nearly $250 million increase in operating expenses from 2018 to 2021, allowing the Company to grow spending, but at a rate slower than that of revenue growth, achieving greater levels of operating leverage.
i found the letter worth it to skim through, but if you don’t have the time, i emphasized what is most important for us as sellers in it. while they didn’t mention the auction/used % of sales again, it was definitely worth noting. curious to see why so much emphasis on PL & MP, but i guess that will come in focus more over the next year.
Back to Barron’s:
In Wednesday’s announcement, eBay said—not for the first time—that it expects to update investors on the strategic review process this fall. Goldman Sachs is advising the company.
here’s a new yorker article on elliott management from august 2018. might be good background reading for their history with other companies:
Paul Singer, Doomsday Investor
The head of Elliott Management has developed a uniquely adversarial, and immensely profitable, way of doing business.
there’s a lot to unpack before making a call one way or another, but activist investors, or vulture capitalists as they are sometimes called, are not usually seen as benevolent.
Wow!!
EBay CEO resigns as company aims to sell major assets
NEW YORK (AP) — Devin Wenig, the CEO of eBay, stepped down over differences with the company’s board of directors.
“In the past few weeks it became clear that I was not on the same page as my new Board,” Wenig tweeted Wednesday, without elaborating on the disagreements. “Whenever that happens, its best for everyone to turn that page over.”
Ebay said there wasn’t one factor leading to the change in leadership.
“Both Devin and the Board believe that a new CEO is best for the company at this time,” eBay said in a prepared statement.
Ebay, which is facing increasing competition from Amazon and other online stores, has been pressured by activist investor Elliott Management to sell off some of its sites. In March, eBay said it might sell its ticket-reselling site StubHub and its classified ads business to focus on its main online sales site. It also added two new directors to its board chosen by Elliott.
First time poster and first post specifically to post this video and comment on how Ryan’s thinking is “right on.” “He used to be a social media guru.” Huh? Sounds spammy to me.
It’s still bizarre to me that sourcing has become more of a novelty than a necessity, but I’ll take it. There are too many interesting things to do in the world than to sit around and concentrate solely on buying and selling.
My current stock level is up to 12,200 items for the main ebay store. While I couldn’t source in thrifts and elsewhere this summer due to other work, I was able to maintain a high level of consistent inventory levels due to the backlog and online sourcing. When I had free time, I would list around my other tasks. If I didn’t have free time, yay autopilot. Ebay just became a way to calm down around real work. Now that the other work has slowed down, I’m still carrying that restfulness. Older stock is selling. Newer stock is selling. Ebay is working as it should be.
I sourced for 4 days last week! The last time I put that much effort into reselling was over 2 years ago! It was fun to act more of the part of a f/t reseller. Even though I am a f/t reseller, I’ve gotten busy with outside projects, working through the backlog and gotten lazy with sourcing online. It was weird, tiring and expensive to get back out there, but I am happy for the exercise and good stock!
I’ve found that when you think you’re at 100% capacity for unlisted stock, there’s always room to add a few more boxes! I’ve listed 60 items sourced this weekend, and another 40 items found during the week. Still a lot to go before I clear through all of it. I am trying to stay on top of it at least. Of the 60 items listed this weekend, 7 have watchers and 1 has a bid.
I’ve gotten my etsy store up to 110 listings. 2 items sold this week. Yay! I have enough items to get up to 150 active listings by q4, if I find the time.
My main ebay store was down a bit this past week. While I normally sell 50-75 items per week, I was down to 40 this week. This is a natural slow time for my niche, so I don’t mind. It will give me more time to source and list for q4 & q1 2020.
lol! please delete this is spam.
Yikes. Of course the usual suspects took this as a chance to monetize their “support for the reseller community” by giving their 2 cents to their huge youtube audiences. I saw a few comments in one of the videos say “thank you so much for looking out for us.” Uhhh…not really?! Now when these people don’t get sales since their items aren’t on PL anymore, who or what are they going to blame? The youtube hucksters?
I can’t upload photos. At least drafts can be saved. I guess I’ll be working on drafts and etsy listings today. 🙁
@debit: That is definitely true. Some people just scroll from high prices to low and then make their decision that way! Depending on the item, it is sometimes better to price at the higher end to attract the right sort of buyer.
As a buyer, I do sometimes find myself going for “best match” type results on both Amazon and Ebay if the item I need is a more common, generic item. I then just figure out which has the best reviews overall and buy from there. I do realize a lot of the initial results are pulled from “sponsored” type ads on both Amazon and Ebay. I do believe that sponsored results can be effective for these type of items, but not necessarily for the vintage type, one of a kind unusual type of items that a lot of us sell.
Yet somehow these gurus are still making hundreds of dollars within 5 minutes of listing (Ralli Roots), and thousands of dollars in a weekend (Don), and before this have had no complaints about their items selling. Now, somehow, Ebay is doing something very, very wrong? Yeah, okay.
I agree with MyCottage and Joe on this one. It sounds like are people willing to pay into a system that on the surface seemed like it would result in more sales (huh?) and visibility, but are now confused about what their payments are actually good for. They’re not seeing the amount of increased sales they were expecting. In most cases, why should they? What are they doing differently with their stores other than running PL? What steps are they taking to improve their businesses? Why blindly throw money at PL if you’re unsure how it works in the first place? That seems to be the case for the majority of people using it. Just throw money at a “promise” of increased visibility, but if your item is still overpriced, not photographed well, not described well, not interesting to a buyer, it will still not sell.
I just looked at listings on Ebay and I’m still seeing promoted listings. My ad blocker (abp, ad blocker plus) runs constantly. I honestly wish it would block promoted listings because it takes me longer to do research on items, but alas, they’re still there.
Scrolling through the comments on his youtube video, people are taking what he says as verbatim and changing the way they run their ebay businesses. Some are calling for class-action lawsuits. That is problematic considering he has no verifiable proof to back his claims.
Oh god, not that guy. He posts the most click-baity videos all.of.the.time. He also posts a lot of speculative information that doesn’t come to pass. I wouldn’t take what he says as “100% going to happen” at all. He is just trying to get views to promote his videos.
I’ve been prepping Etsy since July for Q4. I’ve only had 3 sales this month, but there are only 90 items listed. I’m hoping to get up to 120-150 by October 1st to try to get in sales for both Halloween & Christmas.
I have noticed that likes are going up. I tend to trend at 1-2 likes a day for my items, but I got nearly 10 yesterday.
I had items listed on Etsy last Q4, but it was a very small inventory of only 20-30 items. I’m really curious to see how it goes with a larger inventory!
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