Is eBay starting to dry up?

Amazon has been luring their sellers for years now.

I used to find VERY good Savile Row on eBay ... haven't seen as much of that in the last five to ten years.

Yes. Haven't seen anything that I've really wanted there for a while.

I've mostly given up looking at the sportcoats. Too much chaff and not enough wheat.

Haven't found a good pair of shoes there in a long time. Partly because sellers are asking a premium. Not that I can blame them, in a way. With the economy in shambles, people aren't bidding. Starting high is the only way to go or you risk taking a big hit.

Still, I want a good deal, and Vass at $800 isn't.

I would imagine that it's also ebay offering less and less incentives to sellers while continuing to pile on the fees. Add in the fact that Paypal will 9 times out 10 side with the buyer, even when the seller is in the right doesn't help either.

I like buying on ebay but I hate selling. But now, even as a buyer it's frustrating to see it becoming more and more of a Buy It Now place than an auction place.

How is the SF market place compared to Ebay? Seems like clothing wise this is the place to find what you need.

Most of those ebayers must have lost their home so no internet connection .

The people who sell simply to get rid of stuff is the reason "deals" exist. Whenever you have someone with a clear sense of "street" value for their items, sell items in only that category, with tons of professional quality images, I have no incentives to bid. The cost of shipping is also getting quite ridiculous. I used to send small furnitures and auto parts across the country. These days, postage cost bites into about 5-10% of the final price. Then, you have new auction sites popping up everyone (eCrater, etsy, rubylane, goantiques, etc.), with buy it now prices, which increase the latent value of many bid auctions. The new TV shows (pawn stars, American pickers, antique road show, etc.) have also done much to drive up seller's greed, esp. independent hobby sellers, who think they have freaking gold in anything that looks remotely old. Then, google book has allowed easy access to old advertisements, making finding information and estimating price value more "standardized" across the board. Importantly, sites like worthpoint, which allow you to see past price auctions, give some noob sellers the inflated confidence to list an item to the price it sold for 2 years ago, without consideration for item condition and current market conditions. Like all revolutionary technology, the ebay way of doing business was a boon when it was still a wild wild west.

I dunno - I start 99.9% of my auctions at $9.99 with no reserve and let the market determine the value - and I really havent taken any bad beats in the past few years.

I think most of us are saying -- at least the posts I read -- is that for buyers ... the quality we once found is no longer present ... at least not in the same quantity.

As a seller, I can say this works both ways. The changes eBay made at the end of March (dumping store listings in with everything else) has all but destroyed a nice side business that used to net me $1,500 - $2,000 a month.

Despite having no recent bad feedback and having hundreds of current listings, I'm virtually invisible in the search results for my main selling categories. Best Match and the ambiguous placement criteria that came with it was the start of my business dwindling.

I'm not a "Top-Rated Seller," so most of my listings don't appear in the default search results until the fifth or sixth page if I'm lucky.

The end result has been a steady decline in both page hits and sales. Summer is typically slow, but June through August have been the worst three selling months I've had since I started selling regularly in 2002. Those lower sales mean a near non-existent cash flow, which means it's tougher to pay for supplies and fees, let alone new product.

If you've got a niche category or something really unique, you can still turn a profit on eBay. But I fear that the days of big money for most people on the site are gone. It's not even a matter of bad sales. My dashboard stats show that the watchers and potential buyers are all but gone.

Where is quality clothing on Amazon?

Most of what I see is at the JC Penney level.

ebay is still up there. its just the ebay/paypal butt buddy thing gets old

people are looking towards google checkout, amazon, etc. as other outlets to sell

+1 . Really curious