Aplus.net Blog

Many people in the online business game got their start by selling items on eBay. And that’s a trend that continues strong to this very day. Although it was one of the very first Internet success stories, eBay continues to dominate, with still-high traffic and revenues as well as divisions in roughly 30 countries around the world.

Which makes any potential changes to the company very significant to eCommerce in general. Writing in today’s New York Times, Brad Stone tells of the progress of eBay’s ongoing efforts to transition from action-based sales to “fixed price” listings.

From the article:

“Auctions will always be the core of the core of eBay, it’s what makes eBay unique,” Mr. Donahoe said in a joint interview with Ms. Whitman on Wednesday afternoon. But he noted that fixed priced sales now account for 40 percent of eBay’s marketplace revenue. “We are following our users. They like convenience so what we are simply doing is putting a more explicit focus on that.”

Mr. Donahoe also said the company would announce a new fee structure next week, lowering upfront listing fees and raising the final sale fees that sellers pay only when they have successfully sold an item. Such a move could increase the number of listings on the site but it could also depress revenue in the short term.

In anticipation of the changes, eBay issued lower earnings guidance for the quarter and year ahead than Wall Street had been expecting. The company said revenue in the current quarter would grow as much as 15.8 percent from the same quarter last year and projected revenue for all of 2008 could be as high as $8.75 billion, a 13.6 percent jump. But analysts were expecting a 21.5 percent increase for the quarter and a 17.1 percent increase for the year.

Click here to read the original article.