Can eBay Auction Off Its Laurels?
from the leaping-twenty-foot-chasms-in-two-ten-foot-jumps dept
The luster on eBay continues to fade. As mentioned in Bambi Francisco's pessimistic long view on eBay, eBay's traffic has been on the decline for 9 consecutive months, according to ComScore. EBay is in a tough spot. Tough competitors lie in every direction: Amazon and Overstock are mounting a frontal assault with their own p2p auctions while Google and Yahoo quietly build marketplaces and drain talent away from eBay. Faced with the spectre of decline traffic and revenues, eBay raised their rates for their sellers, angering one of the most vocal groups of eBay loyalists. Though not all sources indicate declining traffic (Alexa, for example), eBay is feeling the difficulty of sustaining continued growth infinitely. EBay's operating income is almost twice that of Yahoo and Google; however Yahoo and Google have comparatively diversified revenue streams and opportunities. EBay needs to show that it can grow its revenue without simply trying to fleece their loyal seller base. EBay has not launched or acquired anything of note in the past few years (launching Craigslist clones don't count). Then again, maybe eBay is just resting on its laurels -- a business that makes over $1B in operating income a year is not too shabby.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
whats wrong with being an income stock
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
Decline of Ebay
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
New entrants
[ link to this | view in chronology ]
they are safe in online auctions world
[ link to this | view in chronology ]