News-Antique.com - Oct 04,2007 - Chicago, Illinois --October 4, 2007--Daryle Lambert, author of “31 Steps to Your Millions in Antiques & Collectibles” and President of 31 Inc. Marketplace & Gallery, has predicted Ebay will soon make several major changes.
“E-bay is in a position of having to defend themselves from newcomers,” states Lambert. “Ebay, since their inception, has made progressive changes, enabling them to capture more and more of the market each year. This has been accomplished by acquiring their competitors, and by increases in their fee structure.”
Noting that new competition is springing up, such as OnlineAuctions.com, where sellers are able to use a no listing fee format, Lambert believes the competition puts Ebay in a place where they may soon have to make some decisions.
“In my humble opinion, the number of unfinished listings, meaning unsold listings, will be Ebay's undoing unless they change their policy,” he says. Lambert believes Ebay sellers will soon realize they are losing far too much money in listing fees on uncompleted sales, and that these lost fees can’t be made up by the profits on their completed sales.
He goes on to explain that eBay has tried to combat this by encouraging sellers to list their items without reserves, so that most of the sales will be completed. “This, however, puts the seller at a disadvantage,” he says, “because they can’t protect their items from selling at a price that isn’t acceptable to them. Ebay has encouraged this is by making the reserve price too expensive to use.”
Lambert believes that eBay tested the market this past September when it offered the entire month with no listing fees. He says this might have been their effort to explore whether or not the increase in final value fees would offset their loss in listing fees. He’s predicting that Ebay will soon eliminate all listing fees, noting that for months, Ebay has been inching up all of their other fees, including fees on PayPal, Pro Stores and Ebay Stores, to perhaps, anticipate lost listing fee revenue.
“If they can maintain their profit margins, without charging a listing fee and increase the number of listings, I think this will give them what they're looking for,” Lambert says. “And, Ebay can’t continue to increase their profits each month if competition offers the seller and buyer a better deal. The only solution for them is to make it unprofitable for their competitors, because of their dominance in the market place. This would be a huge blow to other companies trying to compete. I am not sure that other companies who have chosen this route could survive.”
And Lambert has further predictions about what Ebay’s next moves might be. Noting that in the earlier days of Ebay, completed sales information was available without the need to sign in, now it is not. He believes that the reason one must now sign in to Ebay in order to access the completed sales archived information is because they might be considering charging for this archive
