eBay has a bright idea: Recommendations
What's the biggest difference between bookselling on Amazon and eBay? The way I look at it, it's recommendations.The No. 1 driver of sales on Amazon is keyword searches -- buyers looking for a title or author name. No. 2 is recommendations.
Amazon creates demand for us, and that's why we pay 15 percent for our Marketplace sales. Amazon's customer base and its recommendations (in e-mails and on the Web site) result in tons of sales. The downside is, we depend on the customer figuring out what they want. Then they find us.
The flip side of this is eBay. On eBay, sellers have more license to create demand. The downside, of course, is you've got to work to make those sales. eBay knows a lot about sellers on its site, but it doesn't know much about the buyers.
Now eBay is taking a page from Amazon, and is paying people to write product reviews and it's developing a recommendation engine like Amazon's.
Netflix has had great success in recommending movies, much like Amazon recommends books. But will recommendations work on eBay? The software engineer who developed a recommendation system for Amazon Auctions, Greg Linden, has his doubts. As he recalls, Amazon pulled the plug on auction recommendations years ago because:
[I]t generated complaints from sellers who did not like competitors' items shown next to theirs.I can already hear the howls of protest on the eBay boards once this feature is rolled out. But it appears eBay honchos have already decided it will increase sales, and they're going ahead.
How is bookselling on eBay going for you these days, and what's your take on auction recommendations?
Labels: amazon recommendations, auctions, book recommendations, collaborative filtering, eBay
posted by Steve Weber at 2/22/2007
6 Comments:
I thought that the biggest difference between selling between Ebay and amazon is that on Ebay you actually sell your item.
That is you get to post photos, tell why it is so much better than everything else out there, say how it will improve your life, etc...
On amazon, the advertising is done for you, so all you have to do is say that your book's DJ is ripped.
On Ebay, you show that the DJ is ripped, but you can also show that it has a full number line, and a great inscription by the author.
Ebay still has its place in selling books, and that is selling those books which are very popular, and will certainly get bid on. Signed versions of Fight Club, for example.
Also, Ebay is great for those selling books with big pictures, local histories, yearbooks, weird stuff that is collectible, but you cant just give a short description on Amazon and be done with it.
Ebay is like window shopping, and Amazon is like going through a mail-order catalog.
Keep Up the good work Steve
Eric Carlson Ebay Selling Guide
eBay definitely isn't fro Mass market items.
eBay fees for sellers are restrictive.
sold on Half.com and found Amazon outselling Half 100:1.
re: eBay
if it does not sell you still get to pay the fees and you still have the book so you have lost...for smalltimers like many of us Amazon is still the way to go...
I've been selling on ebay since 1999, and on Amazon for just under one year. I used to sell on Half.com, but quit there a couple of years ago when sales dried up. I still can't quite figure out what happened to Half.com. I've been very happy with my sales on Amazon, and personally, I like the recommendations feature, and have purchased items that were recommended to me before I started selling there. The ranking system in particular helps me to decide if I will list a book on Amazon or ebay. I generally don't list any book on Amazon that ranks below 500,000.
Ebay has been very disappointing of late. My sales are way down, and I have had to re-evaluate my inventory. I used to sell books as a hobby and for extra money in addition to my job at USPS. Due to a serious injury (at home), I'm now trying to make a living selling books.
I am now much more careful about what I list on ebay. I only list books of merit, and I never list any mass-market stuff. I index my books carefully, provide good pictures and descriptions, and have an excellent reputation. I have consistently found that I can sell a book on ebay for $10++, which was selling on Amazon for pennies. I refuse to sell any book for pennies. I'd rather give it away. I applaud ebay's decision to do recommendations, innovation is so important to stay competitive. I'll put my books and reputation next to any other sellers.
Steve, I went to the Amazon site that you linked in your original post. It looks like they do not pay for the reviews! Did they use to pay and know figure they can get them for free?
James,
By "paying" people, I meant that they periodically run contests. So you wouldn't necessarily get paid unless you were one of the winners. There is a good bit of prize money though, look on the right column.
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