More Ebay Listings and Less Traffic - Not a Good Combination

Ina Steiner at Auctionbytes just posted two incredible stories - that Ebay's listings has risen a whopping 670% in the last 2 years, and Ebay's traffic has declined 13% during the same period.  The stories were so surprising, that I had to read them twice.

In the first article (posted 4/13 here), Ina points out that since January 2008, the average number of listings has increased a huge amount - and even more-so in specific categories, such as "Books" (2,222%).  My first response was that she must be counting individual items, and not individual listings.  I thought that for sure she was counting a fixed price listing for 50 widgets as "50" in her count.  Surprisingly, she was not.  I verified this by looking at the "gift certificates" category - which does, in fact., have 15,000+ listings - and many are multi-item.  I am not sure if the 2008 numbers were for "core" listings only (auctions and fixed price) and excluded store items, but even if they did, that would only account for a mere doubling of listings (45 million to 100 million) - certainly nothing like the six-fold rise being reported.

She goes on to give a series of reasons for this astounding rise in listings - 2 of which point the finger squarely at large retailers - those pesky Diamonds, and those importing SKU's with the new Large Merchant Services API.  I wish we could ferret out exactly how much of the rise is due to these sellers, because in many categories, they actually have a minimal impact.  Most of the bigger ebay retailers are in electronics (particularly refurbs and accessories), media (all kinds, including books), and more recently, clothing.  Are there any Diamonds in Art, Antiques, Collectibles, and Crafts?  I don't think so - yet these categories have grown by leaps and bounds (300-700%).

I believe a significant amount of this "growth" in the "non-big-seller-categories" was from the store-to-core move at the start of this month, as well as the introduction of the cheap fixed-price listing (one of Ina's listed reasons).  Many of these fixed priced listings are virtually "permanent".  The crafter that make custom mailboxes might have a fixed price listing for 50 boxes, which he continuously updates over time, and gladly pays .35/month (now probably only .05/month) to keep this listing up so he can sell dozens throughout the year.  "Sell through" rates no longer apply when a listing is really a fixed price item with virtually unlimited quantity and unlimited duration.