Ebay & Business - a personal experience: Part I
We've been selling antiques on ebay for ten years now. Most of those years we didn't work all that hard on listings. Results varied. Occasionally we were well rewarded but not often enough to inspire us to spend a lot of our time on it. Neither of us ever enjoyed office work and the kind of work that is required to get listings on ebay is a lot like office work. A lot of typing, organizing, filing, keeping things in order, correspondence, writing but not creative type writing. Writing accurate descriptions of objects and adding background information. It's a lot like office work. Listing on ebay was a supplement to our income. We used ebay but we didn't depend on it.
In late 2007 I realized that two things were happening that required us to make some drastic changes in our business. What was happening is that we weren't able to generate sufficient income by continuing to do business the way that we had done business for many years which was directly person to person. We weren't seeing enough customers in person and we couldn't depend on the buying habits of the customers that we did see. We weren't doing shows. We weren't renting booth space. We didn't want to do shows or rent booth space.
The second thing that was happening is that the overall economy was deteriorating. The combination of those two situations meant that we had to look for another way of doing business. We decided to take eBay a lot more seriously than we had previously. Beginning in late 2007 we began spending most of our time generating listings for ebay. Our previous negative impressions of ebay were shattered. We were happy with the results.
We sold and sold well on ebay. We felt as though we had found one solution to coping with the radical changes that had occurred in our marketplace and in the economy. We felt that way for several months. Then eBay began fixing what didn't need to be fixed. They began changing the rules.
From comments made by ebay's CEO John Donahue I realized that he had a longterm plan and that he was on a different page of the business book than one that we had ever read or wished to read. Ebay's CEO began sounding as though he had a herd of several million employees whom he wished to whip into line. We are decidedly self employed and we do not wish to be in any other line than one we choose to be in. We did not suddenly desire to have a boss. We had zero interest in becoming employees of a corporation.
We are our own bosses and we run an efficient tight ship of a small business. We had contracted with ebay for their services and had had a good experience on ebay up till then. Their rule changes for businesses such as ours were a case of them trying to fix what was not broken and to fix it in such a way that they were overstepping the boundaries of what one service oriented company can expect from another. eBay is a service oriented company. They are not our employers. Ebay seems to be forgetting that as they come up with the new rules.
The timing of these changes on ebay was particularly unfortunate as the country's economy has been deteriorating over the same months that ebay's rules were changing. Many sellers are just like us in seeking ways to generate money through the economy's downturn. Being faced with the new challenges that ebay's CEO was presenting at this point in time was disappointing, dismaying, and infuriating all at the same time. While CEO John Donahue apparently has many fans who like him on a personal level as evidenced by comments made by attendees of eBay Live and by some eBay co-workers, his popularity is not doing well among many of us who have never met him and who can base our opinions only on the impact of his business decisions on our bottom line.
To be continued in Part II.
Ginny's Links:
Virginia Caputo Photography
Ginny & Jim's eBay Store: Imajgin Antiques Photography Books
The Lancaster County Art Association
The LCAA's Squidoo Page
In late 2007 I realized that two things were happening that required us to make some drastic changes in our business. What was happening is that we weren't able to generate sufficient income by continuing to do business the way that we had done business for many years which was directly person to person. We weren't seeing enough customers in person and we couldn't depend on the buying habits of the customers that we did see. We weren't doing shows. We weren't renting booth space. We didn't want to do shows or rent booth space.
The second thing that was happening is that the overall economy was deteriorating. The combination of those two situations meant that we had to look for another way of doing business. We decided to take eBay a lot more seriously than we had previously. Beginning in late 2007 we began spending most of our time generating listings for ebay. Our previous negative impressions of ebay were shattered. We were happy with the results.
We sold and sold well on ebay. We felt as though we had found one solution to coping with the radical changes that had occurred in our marketplace and in the economy. We felt that way for several months. Then eBay began fixing what didn't need to be fixed. They began changing the rules.
From comments made by ebay's CEO John Donahue I realized that he had a longterm plan and that he was on a different page of the business book than one that we had ever read or wished to read. Ebay's CEO began sounding as though he had a herd of several million employees whom he wished to whip into line. We are decidedly self employed and we do not wish to be in any other line than one we choose to be in. We did not suddenly desire to have a boss. We had zero interest in becoming employees of a corporation.
We are our own bosses and we run an efficient tight ship of a small business. We had contracted with ebay for their services and had had a good experience on ebay up till then. Their rule changes for businesses such as ours were a case of them trying to fix what was not broken and to fix it in such a way that they were overstepping the boundaries of what one service oriented company can expect from another. eBay is a service oriented company. They are not our employers. Ebay seems to be forgetting that as they come up with the new rules.
The timing of these changes on ebay was particularly unfortunate as the country's economy has been deteriorating over the same months that ebay's rules were changing. Many sellers are just like us in seeking ways to generate money through the economy's downturn. Being faced with the new challenges that ebay's CEO was presenting at this point in time was disappointing, dismaying, and infuriating all at the same time. While CEO John Donahue apparently has many fans who like him on a personal level as evidenced by comments made by attendees of eBay Live and by some eBay co-workers, his popularity is not doing well among many of us who have never met him and who can base our opinions only on the impact of his business decisions on our bottom line.
To be continued in Part II.
Ginny's Links:
Virginia Caputo Photography
Ginny & Jim's eBay Store: Imajgin Antiques Photography Books
The Lancaster County Art Association
The LCAA's Squidoo Page
Comments
I look forward to reading your next post -
Marlene
The Savvy Seller