Just a little Cooqy

Various 3rd-party reports are stating that the sellers’ boycott of eBay last week resulted in about 13% fewer listings. Cooqy’s numbers supports eBay’s claim that the boycott had little or no material impact for the week.

A high percentage of Cooqy’s traffic comes from widgets embedded on eBay item listings. Although a 10-15% drop in Cooqy’s widget traffic did occur, the decline started on Feb. 12 and reached its lowest point on Feb. 15, the week prior to the planned boycott. Cooqy’s widget traffic actually increased during the week of the boycott and surpassed the traffic before the initial decline by week’s end. As other reports have pointed out, eBay’s one-day promotion w/ reduced listing fees during the week of the boycott have apparently canceled any significant impact of the boycott.

Had this been a Buyers’ Boycott instead, the results may have been much different to eBay’s bottom line.

During the recent sellers’ boycott, if the marketplace of buyers remained the same then those shoppers would have simply bought items from the available sellers with active listings. eBay makes much more money when items are sold vs. when items are listed, so the bottom line is that eBay’s pocketbook was little changed from having fewer item listings.

On the flip side, had this been a Buyers’ Boycott it likely would have had a substantial material impact to eBay. Fewer shoppers would have resulted in fewer items sold, which would then have caused a major decrease in revenue to eBay.

This is why eBay’s TV commercials are geared towards increasing the amount of shoppers who go to eBay, as opposed to advertising to find new sellers to list their goods on eBay. Buyers rule eBay’s fate more than sellers. Sure, a marketplace requires both parties to function, but in eBay’s case a reduction of sellers just doesn’t harm the overall market…sellers are fungible. Fewer sellers just means that the remaining sellers sell more goods, everything else being equal.