I believe I figured the real WHY on the GTC change, and its not what you think..

[crownsfieldcellular]

I've been on these boards voicing my extreme dissatisfaction with the loss of listing time options for several days.  I've called ebay multiple times, and I've ranted and raved.  I think a lot of this came out of shock and confusion, as I just could not figure out why in God's name they would have done this.

To ME, in my mind, eliminating the urgency that short duration auctions provided was basically suicidal for eBay, and homicidal to my business by eBay's hand.

It's taken me a few days to digest this change, and really put it into perspective.   I think I have finally come up with the bigger picture answer here, and I have begun to see this from eBay's perspective.

Let me start this by saying this:  eBay is not an evil, greedy corporation, looking to suck everyone's blood and destroy everyone's businesses. 

eBay is simply a BUSINESS themselves.  But eBay is a different kind of business than any of us run on their site (unless any of you are running a global, publicly traded corporation on eBay - then you are excluded from that statement). 

They are a Multinational GIGANTIC global corporation, which is publicly traded on Wall Street.  They have shareholders to answer to, board members, and also of course almost 7 million sellers. 

So while I may not agree with everything they do (all of us might not)?  It's important to try to think like them, and consider that they are trying to keep eBay afloat and viable for EVERYONE, including their sellers that depend on them and this website.

If they do not produce profits, growth, dividends and good stats for their shareholders (who may be some of you too), and get their stock price to go up?  There will be no more eBay. 

We will just wake up one day and our favorite market place will be gone.  It's a sobering reality to think about.  I would be extremely, extremely upset and crushed if eBay were to be no more personally.

That said, many of you may become very angry at what I am going to reveal here, some not so much, and some of you might not care.  But understand I am not writing this to "unmask a villian" here and reveal the "evil master plan"..

What's going on here is simply a calculated business decision, and it actually makes a lot of sense (whether you agree with it in full or not).  

What I've seen on these boards (and some of these opinions were previously espoused by me as well) are some basic (incorrect I believe) assumptions, and judgements as to why eBay instituted this GTC change -  and took away our previous options:

1) "It's a sneaky fee grab because they are depending on my unwanted GTC renewal fees as a cash cow because they can't produce more sales!!"

I don't believe this is true.  I firmly believe eBay will remedy this unwanted consequence somehow, because I do not believe this was their intention.  They have also come out vehemently that this was NOT their intention by doing this.  I do not think they are lying to our faces that blatantly.  This was not their real intention for this change (In my opinion).

2) "They're idiots who have no idea how to run this website!!  They arent actual eBay sellers and they are making changes just to make them without realizing how much they are going to hurt my (and their) sales!!"

I was one of the people saying this initially.  I do not think this is the case anymore.  One thing is for certain at least?  They are NOT idiots.

3)"They are trying to push all the small sellers off the site!! They dont want us here anymore!! They just want big China companies (Big corporations, etc)!!"

Again, no I do not think this is their real intention either.  Although it might be an unfortunate collateral consequence it seems, to early to tell.  I do not believe that this was the "spirit" behind this decision though.  It just doesn't make enough sense.  "Casual" sellers who create bad buying experiences for customers are already being weeded out by their other systems, so it just wouldn't make financial sense to axe 30% of your sales force in this way.  The revenue losses would be tremendous, and there would be little to no way to make up for them (again in my opinion that is).

4) "They want to force me to buy a store subscription even though I don't want one!!"

This is probably true, but it's not the whole picture.  Us buying store subscriptions though makes them more money, so obviously if this was one of the reasons for the change?  It would make sense, and I couldn't argue with it as a capitalist understanding they are running a business as well, and knowing all the things I said initially.   So this one?  Probably true, but not the main intention (in my opinion again)

Why is eBay really doing this?   Here is my synopsis:

I believe now that forced GTC is a way to basically nudge more sellers to start using promoted listings.

It's a very covert way of raising their Final Value Fees without actually announcing that change (and really pissing people off)...

I think they thought the change to GTC really wouldn't upset too many people, because they claimed that 80% of listings on the site are already GTC anyway.

I think they underestimated how many people would be upset about this though, and this amount of backlash was not what they were anticipating. 

It's just ironic that all that backlash has been coming from complaints that were incorrect about their agenda (in my opinion).

I believe eBay figured something out here as far as the short term listing duration options go:  I believe that they figured out that sellers were getting "free" organic boosts on the site, using these options.

Especially the 3 day option, which is basically all promoted organically..You get the newly listed boost for a while, and then pretty much right after that ends you are getting a free ending soon boost as well.  Plus you are getting free buyer urgency to help you make a sale.  You were charged nothing for all this before (except the FVF fee and a nominal listing fee if you had no store)

I believe that eBay  came to the realization and made the decision: "Why give sellers something for free?  when we can start charging them to promote instead?" 

I think this the biggest reason they have done this now.

Also, and I know this is true for me; I don't use promoted listings for shorter duration BIN listings. I don't have to really.

So by allowing those duration options there for my (our) use?  They were actually losing money on a big segment of sellers who they believe will now start paying for promotions instead. 

They were leaving money on the table before.  This closes that gap.

Now with this change?

It totally levels the playing field for everyone and there are NO organic boosts anymore.  (outside of "newly" listed, but how long does that last when all your listings start going through the GTC cycles, if they do?)

With everything GTC there is no longer ending soonest boosting, as nothing ever technically "ends". Plus there's no more organic urgency. If you think how great that is for eBay, with their promoted listing structure in place to fill the gap?  It's almost astonishing.

It's a complete win - win for them. Now as a seller you can have slow or moderate sales compared to what you had before with your short duration's? OR you can promote your listings to get them to sell faster, and pay higher Final Value Fees voluntarily.

And of course? You can always lower your prices to get faster sales. Either way? eBay wins (in their minds at least I think).

Eliminating the shorter duration's to me now is just eliminating a few freebies they were giving away for a long time - Organic listing boosting is definitely one of them.

In one fell swoop they took that away completely, and also took away the free URGENCY that those listings created for buyers as well. 

I couldn't figure out why in god's name they would have done this.  Until this all hit me.  Because that URGENCY?  Is also a FREE TOOL they had been giving us. 

Now?  No More.  Now it's basically just paid promotions.

eBay has very, very brilliantly changed the entire landscape of their market, in a very simple way.  To accommodate and usher in a whole new "promotion" game it seems to me. 

And they are proving that there is no free lunch out there big time.

I'm not as angry now that I understand this.  I'm not thrilled about it either, but I'm also not as confused.  Now this all makes sense from their perspective at least.

I've also heard that they will be initiating a feature where you can send offers to watchers.  I think this is brilliant, and it will actually help very much to convert GTC listings (which in the past you simply could not do at all, except running a sale maybe). 

I also like the idea that every listing now with have automatic Make Offer included for free (at least this is what I heard they are going to start doing site wide). 

I think these two features will help with sales a lot.  I don't use best offer too much now, but admittedly in the past it has helped me make a lot more sales when I did.  So they aren't wrong about that.

In a nutshell?  I think what I listed above was the "master plan" though..

It's really the only thing that really makes sense from a big picture, macroscopic lens that eBay sees the world and the market place through.

All in all, I do not think it's a bad idea.  I think it balances out their needs as a business to survive, and our needs to make sales and money pretty well.  If you think of it in those terms, which you really have to.  If you want eBay to be here to sell on.

If this truth **bleep** you off?  I'm sorry, but it seems it is what it is at this point.

I can't say that I am definitely going to start promoting my listngs, but maybe I will at 1 or 2% to compensate for the other lost free tools.  Luckily my profits on my items are usually good enough, and my FVF's in my category are pretty low as to where I wont really feel a 1% increase or so in FVF's.

But that's just me. 

I have no idea how others will fare with this, and I doubt eBay does either. 

This seems like a very calculated "hail mary" play, where if it works?  It might work wonders. 

If it blows up in their face with the sellers?  It could also spell catastrophe as well.

I guess we'll see how it plays out. 

That's my new take on all this.  It's their sandbox, and I need and want them around as a venue to sell on.  

So I'm going to stick around and see how this all plays out.

It could wind up being for the best. Or it could wind up being the worst thing they have ever done/tried and sink the entire website.  That's the cold reality of all this.

We shall see

Good Luck to you all.

[krys888]

Have you looked at eBay’s SEC filings this past week? Very interesting...

[krys888]

Good to China. (Good till cancelled)

[krys888]

We don’t HAVE to do anything. We can leave. And that’s what some of us are doing. I don’t care what the reasons are anymore. None of those reasons benefit me or my business. I’m as interested in eBay’s reasons as they are in mine. They’re not interested in mine.

[krys888]

I came to ebay because i didn’t want to mess with Google. If ebay is now dependent on Google, it tells me that maybe ebay isn’t as exclusive as it used to be and maybe I dont’ need ebay any more. If Google is the focus, then there ARE other options out there other than ebay! Not feeling as nervous about leaving anymore! We’ve got Google!

[buyselljack2016]

I gave up on your rant voiced opinion when I hit this line:

To ME, in my mind, eliminating the urgency that short duration auctions

Short duration auctions are alive and well. Nothing has changed with them. If you want to burn your listings on them no one is stopping you.

I have not read more responses. Someone else may have already stated that.

[tkinnebrew]

Dude u just type what you think huh?  I can't even think that long let alone type and think that long.  Basically it's a money-grab but the big sellers wanted it so they don't have to keep relisting(though you could already select GTC).  It's insanity, sure...  Imagine this though:  now you get 5000 free buy it now listings (GTC) every other week.  Use the freebies now and pay later!!!!

[dazzlecity]

"I believe now that forced GTC is a way to basically nudge more sellers to start using promoted listings.

It's a very covert way of raising their Final Value Fees without actually announcing that change (and really pissing people off)..."

Your words not mine - I read your entire post - I believe that verbiage is exactly correct. I've tried promoted listings - they don't work. Know why everyone is so upset? Because alot of us have been here for 20 years working our butts off eeking out a living - putting cash into ebay and discovering that enough is never enough and when we walk away we get zip - zero - zilch - nada. No gold watch - no retirement plan - not even a kiss. So off they go again - the peasants trying to find another home in a heartless world.

[dhbookds]

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@krys888 wrote:
We don’t HAVE to do anything. We can leave. And that’s what some of us are doing. I don’t care what the reasons are anymore. None of those reasons benefit me or my business. I’m as interested in eBay’s reasons as they are in mine. They’re not interested in mine.

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No argument with leaving, that's always been an option, but some have a hissy fit when you say that.  Ebay's "job" is to do the best for their shareholders.......ours is to do the best we can for ourselves.....that's the bottom line.......

[extraordinarilyyou]

Couldn't you have done this post in a way that did not require reading a book? It is all speculative, so you may as well have gotten right to the point and been done with it. I feel like I just wasted 10 minutes of my life.

[buyselljack2016]

Last job I retired from, I got a nice certificate saying thank you, and showing how many years I had put in. I already knew how many years 🙂

A supervisor that retired before I did got a nice gold watch. The watch did not work.

[stphnwinslow4858]

I think they're removing the search result bump you get from listing a new item. Wasn't it common knowledge you'd get a bump from using "sell similar" rather than just using GTC?

[crownsfieldcellular]

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@weschurch wrote:

This has been brought up already several times. You are half right.

What Ebay is doing is spreading a disease, than offering the cure for money.  They are structuring their system but need you not forget who is spreading the disease to begin with. Its entirely shady and reeks of desperation

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I've never seen this theory posed on the boards, but maybe I missed it.  I definitely agree the disease analogy is good way to look at it.  I'm not in any way saying I like what they are doing, my point was I think I understand it now so that makes it a bit easier to accept.  It does appear to pretty desperate move, and I also agree that if I'm right?  This was a very shady way of doing things.  In my mind they could have been a lot more transparent and honest about everything, and I would have taken a fee hike happily over them revamping the entire system if given a choice.

[grumpus_otter]

"I believe eBay figured something out here as far as the short term listing duration options go:  I believe that they figured out that sellers were getting "free" organic boosts on the site, using these options.

Especially the 3 day option, which is basically all promoted organically..You get the newly listed boost for a while, and then pretty much right after that ends you are getting a free ending soon boost as well.  Plus you are getting free buyer urgency to help you make a sale.  You were charged nothing for all this before (except the FVF fee and a nominal listing fee if you had no store)"

OP, could you expand on what you mean by this please?  I am a wee tiny seller so not as experienced as y'all--what do you mean by "promoted organically" and the "newly-listed" boost?

[castlemagicmemories]

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@crownsfieldcellular wrote:

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@castlemagicmemories wrote:

Interesting but the reasons that eBay has given for this, although they may just seem to be ostensible reasons to you, may actually be a large part of what has motivated this~that those who search via Google will supposedly be better able to find what they want on Ebay, thus, hopefully resulting in more sales.  More sales mean more FVFs for Ebay~so I don't think you can leave this out of the picture completely.

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I don't doubt that this is also part of the agenda, but I think it's a smaller part  and here's why:  While in theory that kind of makes sense (I've heard people talk about "no more broken or already sold" ebay links from google searches) - it doesn't take into account something very important in that picture; namely that sellers like me make up maybe 30% of the ebay market, and we sell "one off items"..

Meaning we have no inventory that will be piled on a GTC listing, leaving the listing up indefinitely. 

When my item is sold?  That listing automatically comes down, because I have no need to use the "out of stock feature", and I won't.  It's a hindrance to me to have to manually end items, and I never get the same item twice to sell, so it's a useless option for me.  All my phones I sell are unique one offs.

So in my mind, eBay had to know this.  They also claimed that 75% - 80% of the listings already were utilizing GTC formats.  So by default, they also knew that the other 20% - 25% of those listings were one off items with a quantity of one. 

So what sense does it make to change ALL of THOSE listings GTC's as well?  How does that help with google, when once those are sold?  It's exactly the same situation as they had before with listings like this and google?

That just doesn't make sense to me as the pure agenda here.  It's a good story, and maybe there's some validity there.

But in the end?  I can't see that being the real reason, simply because it does not solve the problem with google that were having. 

Not forgetting that also, sellers like myself are now manually ending GTC's every few days and relisting them, to get another organic boost in the engine, after we feel the listing has "gone stale" (when its been up 5 days or more with no sale)...They had to know sellers like us were going to do this as well..So again, problem with google not solved...Same issue of ended item links, just as before.

So..While I can agree maybe it was a factor in their rationale?  I don't think it was the only motivation here, and I firmly believe this was a big push toward changing their landscape to be more "promotion" friendly and inviting.

It's also very possible that both of these were equal considerations, and that's probably true as well, but we'll never know that with any certainty.

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Maybe there is another reason we have not considered as far as one off items.

Your points are well taken, but bear with me.  Suppose that a one off item that is on for 7 days ends without a sale, and it is not relisted, for whatever reason.  Suppose all the sellers one off items go off without a sale, and none of them are relisted.  That's a loss of potential sales and FVFs that might be made had the item automatically relisted as a GTC, and that would figure into Google as the link would be dead if not relisted.  Just speculation on my part, I don't know.  It would be the pure fact that they didn't sell, and may not be relisted, that would figure in, then.

IIRC, several years ago, it was announced that the default for new sellers would be GTC, so the items would be relisted.  

GTC items don't get a boost as a relist; they only get that starting boost the first time they are listed, and not thereafter.

I agree with you, there may be several, perhaps many, factors that come into play and consideration with this decision, and we don't know what they may be.

[zamo-zuan]

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@crownsfieldcellular wrote:

I have no idea how others will fare with this, and I doubt eBay does either. 

This seems like a very calculated "hail mary" play, where if it works?  It might work wonders. 

If it blows up in their face with the sellers?  It could also spell catastrophe as well.

I guess we'll see how it plays out. 

That's my new take on all this.  It's their sandbox, and I need and want them around as a venue to sell on.  

So I'm going to stick around and see how this all plays out.

It could wind up being for the best. Or it could wind up being the worst thing they have ever done/tried and sink the entire website.  That's the cold reality of all this.

We shall see

Good Luck to you all.

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I've been posting about the major issues with eBay's search, stagnant listing calculation, SEO calculation, search manipulation, etc for around a year now. 

The issues were never fixed. The problem is, now that they're forcing GTC on everyone, the problems are becoming apparent to the mainstream. 

Not using GTC largely avoided these issues as the SEO statistics didn't have time to kick in, and sellers weren't able to see how much manpower it takes to actually manage the listings without eBay's ridiculous penalties kicking in. And without the natural boost to "new listings" and "ending soon", it's obvious how the system is designed to basically force you in to sponsored listings.

This is just a continuation of the trend, and as much as it is a horrible thing that other sellers are going to have issues now, I can only hope that it will end up being a good thing that the problems are more apparent. The very first time I posted regarding this issue on this forum, I had said that it seems the only way this issue will be resolved is if it gets enough public attention. I still believe this to be true. 

The only thing I hope people realize, is that "forcing GTC" isn't the real issue at hand here. The real issue is eBay's search algorithm and design is painfully broken, and built around an unsustainable design. The biggest piece of evidence for this is that this design requires sellers to PAY MORE in order to receive the amount of visibility they used to get, and this is bringing eBay's prices up on the entire marketplace, which is extremely bad news for the entirety of eBay. It hurts sellers. It hurts buyers (by giving them higher prices). It only benefits eBay in extra income, but that little bit of extra income won't make up for less sales on the marketplace now that prices on eBay are higher than the competition.