Heads or Tails?

As one of the smaller sellers out here on eBay's Long Tail, I am frustrated by eBay's apparent decision to snip us off -- ouch! I guess I shouldn't take it personally. It is just business.

For us antiques dealers, it has been a great ride, selling out here in our little eBay niche. It's easy to think that we are "all that", and to forget about the Big Head. But eBay definitely hasn't forgotten about it. In fact, they are madly in love with the head -- the big, fat, juicy, money-making head.

I think that this is a good example of the 80/20 Rule (the Pareto Principle) in play. I'm don't know the exact statistic, but it's probably close enough to make my point. Ballpark figure, 80% of eBay's sales are coming from maybe 20% of the sellers. And inversely, probably 20% of the buyers make 80% of the purchases.

Now that's not to say that the sales amounts of the 80%-Long-Tail-Sellers doesn't add up. But it does mean that eBay has to put far fewer resources out for the BH20%, so we 80%LTS are much less important to them. Ebay thinks that they could make more money if they focus on making things work better for the top selling/buying 20%, and sadly, they probably can.

I have been surfing around the fascinating statistics offered up so generously from the SELLER DOME website. Narrowing it down a little, I clicked on the list of the "Top eBay Sellers Registered in the United States", which is sorted by feedback totals. You can then click on each seller's name to get detailed stats on their gross eBay sales.

• My eBay seller name, msdowantiques, with a feedback score of 3,197, has a sellerdome ranking of a lowly #83,225.
• The seller I mentioned recently, wendyhur, with 13,752 feedbacks, ranks at #8,176.

Definitely Long Tail numbers. And believe me, I feel quite insignificant based on that comparison alone, but it gets much worse.

Looking at the U.S. list from the Big Head top, starting with sellers with the highest feedbacks (around 1,000,000), I went down the list looking for sellers that list antiques/collectibles, as opposed to electronics, dvds, etc., and I'd say the highest-ranked seller that sells vintage items is probably:

• Replacements Ltd, replacementsltd, which is a well known company that sells dishes, etc.
• Their feedback is 82,533, and their sellerdome rank is #335,
• Average monthly sales of $135,231.00.

That's impressive Big-Head numbers, and no other vintage/antiques dealer comes close.

Now, jumping to the Crown on the Big Head. Just look at the stats for the reviled newcomer, BUY.COM...

• Their eBay name is buy, feedback is already 275,545, and they rank #36!
• # of Listings, monthly avg. = 1,699,397 / Sell-Through = 2.30 % / Average Sale Price = $42.26
• Monthly sales: $2,202,346.00. That's right -- over $2 million a month. Even with the rumored fee discounts, they still have to be paying eBay a hefty chunk'o'cash.

If that doesn't put into perspective for you why eBay loves the Big Head, here's a few more interesting seller-dome stats:

• The top 8 U.S. sellers (ordered by feedback, not sales amounts) had average monthly sales of

1. $345,447
2. $277,132
3. $220,146
4. $260,864
5. $114,059
6. $61,461
7. $487,657
8. $307,005

That totals approx. $2,012,00 per month

• #9 is ebestdeal4u, with an impressive $1,723,713 per month., bringing the approx. monthly gross sales of those 9 sellers to $3,736,000.
• #10 on their list, bargainland, has been inactive for the last month, so I will add in #36, BUY.com's $2,202,346 to make my top 10 list complete, as I am sure BUY will be zooming to the top of the list momentarily anyway.

That makes the average monthly gross sales total for the Top Ten Big Head U.S. Ebay Sellers pretty darn close to a whopping $6 million dollars! And the Big Head is likely to get bigger and BIGGER.

So you can see that eBay is telling us antiques and collectibles dealers that they tossed the coin, and it's "Big-Head Wins, and Long-Tails, You Lose".

It's time for the Long Tailers to look around for a new home before eBay officially chops us off, or just cuts off all "life support" and we just wither away.