10 Reasons Why eBay Died

It’s November 25th, 2008 and eBay is going down in flames. Traffic has dropped off 20% this year alone with no hope in sight. What went wrong with the company besides those awful commercials? Here’s 10 Reasons why. Feel free to add to the list.

1. Overpopulated. Ebay got out of control 4 years ago with the whole ‘eBay Millionaires’ hype that spawned into ‘Sell Your Stuff On eBay’ brick and mortar stores and ultimately led to a massive influx of ubiquitous products.

2. Poorly Regulated. Counterfeit items and fake products flooded eBay all the way through 2006. Luxury brands have actually had to hire employees specifically to find people selling illegitimate items claiming to be ‘Real’. I prefer the term ‘Not Guaranteed Authentic’, but either way, it was detrimental to eBay.

3. Scams. Next we saw the Nigerian scandals popping up. For the last 2 years, it has been such a task to resell any technology item like a mobile phone or a laptop. Countless times I tried selling my Blackberry or Apple Macbook only to find the winning bidder is located in Nigeria and is trying to pull off some scam with a foreign bank account.

4. User Experience. Once eBay had it’s millionaires, along came the businesses that made their living off of it. New software was built for on-demand mass listings on eBay where eRetailers were clearing out their warehouses for decent margins. Now, when I search for a golf club or a pair of sneakers on eBay, I may as well be on Shopzilla, sifting through professional listed products. The whole ‘Auction’ experience on the users end has become entirely depleted. The original eBay users went there because it was an ‘event’ and if you were able to get the item, you actually felt like you won something. Now I feel the same budget guilt buying something on eBay as I would buying a Cinnabun. Sometime worse because I waited 7 days for an auction to end and found a better deal on another web site. More