Responses to eBay's "Analyst Day"

As a small seller on eBay, I try to keep my ear to the ground about how the company is going to be treating folks like me in the future. Last week eBay held their "Analyst Day", and the reports from those who know about what eBay discussed are distressing.

Small sellers are what made eBay back in the day. One statement that really stood out was “The old Ebay was sitting in people’s attics. The new Ebay is sitting in warehouses,” said Lorrie Norrington, president of marketplaces. So now it seems that all of us who sell vintage items of any sort, are no longer valuable to eBay? That seems crazy to me.

I did a little market research this morning, pretty straight forward. When I search on eBay for the keyword "vintage", a whopping 1,483,063 listings come up. I compare that to all the listings in the Computers & Networking catagory, and it has 1,342,683 items listed. Hmmmm. So I did some more. Right now there are 219,061 items listed under Antiques. And 243,552 items listed in Entertainment Memorabilia. And 2,066,462 in Collectibles!

So can someone explain why those of us who sell stuff "from our attics" are no longer valuable to eBay? Our listings don't make them money?

Other longtime sellers are upset about this as well. My bud John from ColderICE has done a big rant about the recent Analyst Day that can be found here and which is well worth the read. Should you wish to read through the entire PDF of the presentation made, you can read it here (note, it's a large file that takes time to load):

I, like other smaller sellers, do wonder sometimes just what it is that TPTB at eBay are thinking...