Amazon Takes Page from eBay's Marketing Playbook

by: Harriet

That is very funny! Amazon is doing an end run on eBay, and may beat them at their own former very successful business model.

I also have to say that I have a neighbor who has a "leg lamp" prominently displayed in his front bay window for the holidays. I laugh every time I go by it.

So who says that every one wants slick iphones and wants to abandon collectible items, even funky ones.

by: tekgems

Amazon does make it easy when the inventory listing is pre-existing. Creating a new listing from scratch can be somewhat of an arduous task. If Amazon could streamline it like eBay Selling (on the iPhone), that would make things much easier for the seller. I don't know how wise it would be to use Amazon FBA for one-off items, so I don't agree with that part of the advertisement.

by: Old timer

Just a few random thoughts on this topic (and yes, some are tongue in cheek):

1 - Since eBay seems to be dead set on becoming more like Amazon all the time, maybe this means that eBay will start courting the small sellers of unique items once again. Then again, eBay really burned a lot of bridges with those sellers in the last few years.

2 - If Amazon actually courts sellers of one of a kind items, I might actually list some of my items on Amazon.

3 - I'll plan on using Amazon the same way as I now use eBay -- as a source of new customers to direct to my main site (not on eBay or Amazon).

4 - If Amazon is picking up some of eBay's discarded product categories, could they also be heading toward offering auctions down the road? That would be a real end run around eBay.

We'll have to see where this leads in 2011.

by: walter

Bezos has in his power the ability to finish Ebay off right now.

First there is a very large group of unhappy Ebay sellers of unique items looking, hoping, wishing, praying for an alternative that works or for Donohoe to go AWOL.

Even if Donohoe gets the boot, the loyalty and trust sellers once had in Ebay has been severely damaged beyond ever being repaired.

Amazon auctions could be a huge blow to ebay if they lost the unique sellers. Amazon already has the basic common retail market cornered but if they could add the off the wall long-tail stuff too Ebay would die a whole lot quicker than it is.

Will Bezos make the mistake of not going for the jugular when he has the power?

Tune in 2011 to find out.

Coke let Pepsi get away from them when they had a chance for a cheap buyout once upon a time and didn't do it, look what happened.

by: permacrisis

I always find it irksome when people mention that Yahoo Auction 'closed.' They didn't close so much as, they were BRIBED into shutting down by eBay in preparation for the DSR and Best Match rollout. It's in their 2007 SEC filing.

That speaks volumes about todays current situation, in which small, one-off auction sellers have no place else to go. This is no coincidence. We're back burner fodder for in case ebay's glamor plans don't work out.

Consider the proliferation of the 'penny auction' sites, the ones where buyers have to pay to play, and yet there are no auction-only venues like ebay circa 2003.

Doncha think that's a little strange?

And don't tell me it's cause 'auctions are dead'-- A&E's "Auction Wars" is the latest in a raft of TV shows that clearly demonstrate how people are still hooked on the thrill of the hunt.

by: Rich

Amazon is smart and is looking to make more money and knock Ebay out.  For most items that can be found new and on Ebay and Amazon; the better prices are at Amazon because there's more selling competition because Ebay's chased away so many good sellers.  Also; sellers with stores pay a lot less in fees on Amazon than on Ebay(there's no 5 cent/month listing fee which is huge difference).  They also do not have Paypal fees.  So Amazon sellers can offer lower prices.  Smart buyers now compare prices and buy on Amazon.  Now Amazon is looking to expand into used and older items which would crush Ebay if Amazon builds market share.  Amazon hasn't raised fees in many years and Ebay raises them every year.  Ebay's used to be number 1 4 years ago by a wide margin; now they priced themselves into a distant second.  Ebay raises fees--sellers raise item prices--buyers find lower prices at Amazon--this isn't rocket science

by: Ebays Slow Death

Best of all, there is Amazon Payments.  If they opened up their auctions again, you win the bid, and your credit card on file is immediately charged.  

If Amazon had auctions again, it would be the stake in Ebay's heart.

We can only hope-

by: Ron

Unique,strange and things people don't need but want was the life blood of ebay. They've turned their backs on those folks to concentrate on the everyone's got it crapola sellers. If Amazon comes up with a plan for the unique,strange and in demand ebay can color me gone. I built it one item at a time and I'll take it appart one item at a time it's their sandbox,but my toys..

by: Karma

@Ron:

"it's their sandbox, but my toys"

Well said!

by: whatever.

@Ebays Slow Death

thank you for emphasizing the fact that if amazon would add auctions, they'd be adding them back because they already did auctions back in the day when ebay was king--and their auction platform would be the streamlined circa 2001 version not ebay's iFramed disaster.

i never thought it would be such a stretch for amazon to add (back) auctions since they once had them after all!

by: Hip Hip Hooray!

I'm heading to Amazon! I signed up to sell there but forgot all about it.

by: falken

You ebay refugees better read up on the rules at Amazon if you're moving over there.  They're strict, they kick you to the curb in a second if you violate policy.  More importantly don't bring your garbage to a quality site and disrupt the customer base that is established there.  Especially the guy that wants to use Amazon and Ebay as an advertisment platform to divert traffic to their own site, if caught, you'll get banned in a second.  Ebay idiot sellers will find that they can't locate their items in the catalog so they'll go to the everything else catagory and start creating pages and start messing up the catalog.  Another annoyance that ebay sellers do is use their pro merchant account to change existing catalog pages to change the text and description on the product detail page to match their own item which WAS different than the product page.  Now the one idiot seller is the only one out of the rest of them that has an accurately described item and none of the other sellers have a clue until someone buys the item and that seller says "WTF is this?  I never sold this".  

I hate ebay for the fact that their changes are sending their sellers which are the worst of the worst, over to the good venue in droves.  Those sellers are destroying prices because they don't understand how the platform works.  I don't want Amazon to be assoicated with knock offs and counterfeits like Ebay is, and I fear that's what we can expect.  Thank god Amazon has an excellent system to ban and keep terrible sellers off their system, they're going to be making use of it a lot.

by: J Blow

When considering Amazon as a venue keep in mind that Amazon buyers are twice as bad as eBay buyers. This retard: falken is a prime example of many Amazon users:
''by: falken
 Fri Dec 17 11:26:28 2010
You ebay refugees better read up on the rules at Amazon if you're moving over there.  They're strict, they kick you to the curb in a second if you violate policy.  More importantly don't bring your garbage to a quality site and disrupt the customer base that is established there.''

by: Unhappy Ebay seller (Another one)

I hope Amazon steps in - Now is the time.

There are thousands of unhappy ebay sellers - And more who have been booted for no good reason looking for a place to sell that actually has traffic.

Yes - Amazon is strict - But it couldn't be worse than Ebay.

I hope Amazon re-opens their clothing and accessories category.
I would move my merchandise there today if the category was available.

I'd love to see Amazon auctions as well.

Ebay had their business model right to begin with but they don't realize it.

It's time for Amazon to step in.

by: Jeff

Please Santa Clause, Please, make Amazon a site where small sellers like myself can list one of a kind do-dads and unique things like eBay was in it's golden years. If Amazon allowed small sellers to list things at auction, I'd be there in a heartbeat. I'd love to see eBay get it's comeuppance for the way it's treated us the past several years.

by: permacrisis

No, it has to be Yahoo Auctions, because Amazon also uses a kind of Best Match.

Personally I think Best Match is the worst thing ever to happen to eBay, changing it from a handy jacknife with many different blades but predictable behavior, into a psychotic boxcutter that could fold shut on your hand at any minute, slicing off all your fingers but yet you need it to cut this one more steak and just maybe hopefully you can eat tonight. And you'd use a steak knife if they still sold them, but in preparation for Best Boxcutter, the boxcutter company went around buying up, suing, or paying off all the steak knife companies and so now all that's left is the stupid boxcutter you now hold in your hand.

So you resign yourself to at least finding the sharpest boxcutter you can, and that's when you discover that to buy a boxcutter you have to use BoxPal as the only means of payment, indeed the only reason the boxcutter factory is even open at all, or you would hav absolutley nothing to cut anything with. It does not inspire you with confidence to learn that BoxPal is being used more and more widely in the spoon industry, and the boxcutter factory is rumored to be getting sold off to the chinese.

But other than that, it's great! .

by: whatever.

Anyone get the feeling that ''falken'' is an eBay shill? I mean who but current ebay staff really believes that their own customers are ''idiot sellers'' who sell nothing but ''garbage.''

by: whatever.

@ permacrisis:

one would hope that (the return of) Amazon Auctions would use Time Ending Soonest as the default sort for items that have a clock running down on their listings.

by: Ming the Merciless

"Ebay had their business model right to begin with but they don't realize it."

I hope those who read Auctionbytes will forget this idea.

From the moment Negged Meg sold her soul to Goldman Sachs, the party was over but the band played on.

Ebay's business model to attract investors and court Wall Street approval was twofold: 1) raise seller fees as often as the market could bear and 2) "synergistic" acquisitions.

Negged Meg's acquisition failures are well documented. PayPal was a no brainer as ebay had PO'ed far too many sellers with their greedy BillPoint model. Most of the others are emminently forgettable.

By 2004-2005, many sellers had to raise their prices to the price points of the brick and mortar deep discounters, and that signalled the beginning the end of ebafia.

Whitman was well aware of what she was doing but her only objective was increasing the value of her stock and stock options NOT the long term viability of her corproation.

She was far too dumb to figure out a sustainable business model whose longevity wasn't tied to constant fee increases but smart enough to understand that constant fee increases and customer service layoffs pleased Wall Street and made her stock more valuable.

Whitman engineered the demise of ebay, and The Ho has been the train's chief conductor.

by: Charlotte Schwebb

''Anyone get the feeling that 'falken' is an eBay shill?''

Yes.