eBay, Water Your Roots!

Unless you've been too busy buying stuff from Amazon over the last couple of years and haven't noticed, eBay is about to turn its ship around. It's a risky move, and it better pay off.

eBay is unabashedly giving discounts to its largest partners (like Buy.com), and wants to give similar discounts to a brand new tier of PowerSeller: the Diamond level. These "eBay sellers" must generate $500,000 in revenue per month to be eligible for these discounts.

At the same time, eBay is doing everything it can to empower customers over sellers, and provide the equivalent of Amazon's A-Z guarantee (as long as the buyer's paid with PayPal, of course).

Meg Whitman's departure, but more importantly a shrinking growth rate has spurred these changes. So has a little company in Seattle, called Amazon.

So if all these changes come about and the site changes, where does that leave eBay's smaller sellers? And does it matter even whether they stay or go?

Which brings us to this article's point. (Finally, I know.)

eBay is what it is today thanks to the many smaller sellers who took a chance on a little auction site in the Silicon Valley. They worked insane hours to chase the American dream of owning your own business. They also sold some zany items (Brittany's gum, Elvis' water glass, a Virgin Mary sandwich, etc., etc.). The tidal wave of publicity that eBay enjoyed as a result made eBay a new Web icon.

If eBay's loses that part of its past by turning its back on smaller sellers, the people who provided it's character, then it's goodbye to the iconic eBay.

That's why Mary Lou Song's euphonious attempt to keep old-school eBay alive through her new site (see http://blog.auctionbytes.com/cgi-bin/blog/blog.pl?/comments/2008/6/1214361610.html) came at a great time!

Let's hope more people stand up and applaud her music!