Power Sellers Unite

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17240 Location: Texas

Each year, the Sellers Choice Awards lets online sellers rate the online marketplaces they use on a number of criteria, and then publish the results in EcommerceBytes. Last year, almost 2,800 readers participated, and this year, a record 4,500 readers took part in Phase 1 - the nomination process, which narrows down the voting to the final 16. There are some interesting new additions to the list of finalists this year.

The nomination process for the 2012 Sellers Choice Awards ended on Friday, and today, the polls are open!

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y212/m01/abu0303/s01

things4u · Joined: 21 Jan 2007 Posts: 1332

Good read and survey maybe the sites will take away some good advice from the users of their sites

elgato · Joined: 24 Feb 2005 Posts: 17240 Location: Texas

Results:

Over 7,200 online sellers participated in the 2012 EcommerceBytes Sellers Choice survey, dwarfing the 2,800 responses we received last year. Survey participants judged the 16 marketplace finalists on profitability, customer service, communication, ease-of-use, and indicated on a scale of 1-10 how likely they were to recommend each marketplace as a selling venue to a friend or colleague. Respondents also provided details about the rewards and challenges of selling on each marketplace on which they had experience selling.

http://www.auctionbytes.com/cab/abu/y212/m02/abu0304/s02

thegolfingdolphin · Joined: 13 Jan 2009 Posts: 695

The most interesting stat in this is the venue ArtFire going from 1st to last. The area that is very telling is the Profitability and only getting a 3.99 rating. This venue has a flat rate monthly fee of 11.95 with no FVF fees. If this poll is accurate, and I see no reason why it isn't that means that they must not get any traffic, and are not even found in search engines. If sellers are not profitable at $11.95 that is a death signal for the venue.

BTW I went to to there forum to see if the accusations are true about bullying, and I can say it is rampant, even today after the poll results. I next went to do a few external searches and they do have listings showing in google but most of them are 404 error's. Something is badly wrong with this venue.

ebayrunaway · Joined: 22 Mar 2012 Posts: 24 Location: Arkansas

In the article at the first link posted by elgato:

"First, eBay CEO John Donahoe revealed that more changes are coming, mentioning that new products will roll out to eBay Marketplaces in 2012. Secondly, "regular" sellers will at some point have to deal with an influx of inventory from GSI Commerce's 500 large brands and retailers (13 of them are already on the U.S. marketplace). One change that eBay is already testing is the placement of very prominent off-site advertisements within the auction description page."

So, I guess small sellers are about to be buried by a deluge of products by international "high-rollers."

http://www.gsicommerce.com/clients/

Also, I think it's interesting that ebay is using "very prominent off-site advertisements within the auction description page." I don't have any on my pages, yet, but . . . this seems rather invasive and also hypocritical, since ebay doesn't allow sellers to place links to off-site links, unless it directly relates to the item for sale and will help the buyer make a decision to buy the item.

So, is this affiliate marketing? Will sellers have the option of refusing ad links on their page, since this wasn't part of the user agreement years ago, when I joined ebay? Or are they going to just rewrite policy again and force compliance?

I find this to be more bullying, and they're getting darned good at it as time goes by! What if a seller has an issue with the ad link that they stick on your description page? And "very prominent" is annoying, too. How distracting will that be, when you're trying to sell an item, who wants the person to be distracted by their "very prominent" off-site link, which may lure the buyer off of your page.

I know other auction sites have ads on their pages, but that's because they don't charge fees or have greatly reduced fees, compared to ebay. And you know that up front, because that's how it's done.

So sick of ebay - eeeeesh!