The ULTIMATE Guide to the eBay Changes for June

I am not sure what direction eBay wants to go in right now, but they seem to have a glimmer of hope. eBay hopes that making the changes which they should have made back in 2004-2005 will help. What would have been “major” advancements in ecommerce 5 years ago, now seem rather hoo-hum. These moves at eBay are sort of like throwing out the ugly shag carpeting in the guest room, FINALLY.

But I must admit, I hated that ugly carpet so I think the changes would help too. I am just not to sure it will help that much though, but they sure can’t do much worse than they did in 2008 now can they? Or can they? That still remains to be seen. Remember eBay normally falls flat on its face when they actually IMPLEMENT change, not when they make simply make announcements of change

eBay Spring Changes white paper now available – HERE

Now being the “cool ass, bro ham” that I am, the “dudes” sent over a few angles they learned so I could share them with the ColderICE readers. See they know that you guys are cool as hell too!

• This is really eBay trying to Amazon-ify the secondary market.  They haven’t been able to win in primary / mainstream products, so they’re taking cues from Amazon and applying them to secondary market products. 
• Look at the Amazonian history: free shipping, fixed prices, trust improvements, and now catalog pages, better item pages, multi-SKU, the BUYING GUARANTEE…more proof of this in the eBay analyst day slide we included in the report
• Look at the New York Times story titled “Undoing Meg Whitman’s eBay” 
• Auctions are REALLY falling out of favor. Multi-SKU will probably become another death-blow as the number of listings really dries up (more consolidation, less focus on listing coverage). Look at the 12% fixed price growth, -20% auction growth
• Blackthorne and other eBay tools may not support multi-SKU until OCTOBER!  This is going to hurt a lot of sellers and really delay their transition to parent / child.
• eBay’s changes make it easier to go multi-channel — they’re finally adopting the parent / child structure that everyone else has (Amazon, Buy.com, Web Stores, etc.)