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This strategy has been adopted by eBay as well and artificially drives up prices. Let me elaborate. Recently, eBay has made it so that only the products with p

This strategy has been adopted by eBay as well and artificially drives up prices. Let me elaborate. Recently, eBay has made it so that only the products with paid ads are shown in places where customers click. This drives up the cost of everything by more than 10% which is eBay's ad fee. I refused to buy a paid ad to sell my MacBook. It sat on the site for a month, which is highly unusual for an in-demand and rightly priced product. Finally I lowered the price enough to get it sold. Most consumers use the default site, which filters by Recommended (i.e. ads) The play for consumers to win at this new payola ad scheme is to always filter by lowest price (or in amazon's case Prime + lowest price) But really, consumers don't win (and neither do sellers) because now these ads take up space in supposed "search results" for items which don't match the search terms (but are close enough) This creates frustration when you are looking for something to meet a specification, like E26 light bulbs for example. Here, it is pointless to show anything that doesn't meet that specification and yet the site shows them, and the seller has to pay the ad fee. Please somebody make a site with no payola!

granzymes 3y ago
You are touching on a point that Benedict Evans has made quite eloquently in the past: >There was a joke a few years ago that rent is the new [Customer Acquisition Cost], and that now applies to everything. The [Total Addressable Market] for search ads is not ‘advertising’ (let alone online advertising) but everything that is spent to reach and serve a customer, starting with retail rents. This applies to Amazon, but even more to Google - you can ask whether Google’s ads are ‘advertising’ or ‘marketing’, but also ask whether the TAM for buying placement in Google search results is ‘advertising’, ‘marketing’ or just its customers’ operating margins. How do you reach a consumer? Do you spend your budget on TV ads or search ads, or on retail rents, or on giving retailers a margin versus selling direct, or giving the retailer a better price for better placement, or free shipping, or a better returns policy? Everything below P&G’s COGS line is up for grabs. https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-think-about-amazon-advertising https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-thi... There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable. It's a scaled version of the same way a landlord will raise rents on a profitable storefront.
- codexb 3y ago
  It's going to be a bit harder to win on this end I think. Manufacturer's require retailers to agree to this type of restriction all the time time (and it's mandatory, not voluntary) like it is with Amazon.
- simpaticoder 3y ago
  >There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable. It's still possible that people exist who charge "what it's worth" rather than "what they can get". Those people can still make a fine living off of a two sided market place through flat transaction fees. Craigslist is an example that comes immediately to mind. Smart market participants are already punishing providers that maximize profit with payola, which is leading to success of new smaller niche markets - reverb.com comes to mind, or bricklink.com or alibris.com. That is not to say the market of markets is "solving" this problem - we probably want more consumer protection law - but it does show that your startement about ads is, strictly speaking, false.
  - afiori 3y ago
    But you need the entire marketplace to follow that rule. You cannot charge "what it's worth" on amazon because you either pay the ad tax or you compete for the lowest price.
  - alsetmusic 3y ago
    Craigslist is a hell hole. I stopped selling there because even when I was practically giving electronics away (to prevent buyer’s remorse), people still emailed insultingly low offers. I just gave up on the site maybe five years ago.
    - simpaticoder 3y ago
      CL has gotten much much worse over the last few years. So has FB Marketplace. Perhaps a hidden value of the payola approach is to avoid these outcomes. Or perhaps every marketplace declines like this. It may be that private secondary market online market is simply not a sustainable business. That would be unfortunate, but interesting.
pierat 3y ago
Thats not the only thing I caught, at least with Ebay. During the pandemic, I decided to sell a bunch of a component I had stockpiled. (Im not a scalper. I got the parts when my dad died.). I put them for sale with $100 minimum, auction. They ended up selling for $300. I was definitely happy.... until Ebay refused to send me my money, and instead demanded access to a bank account, after the sale was complete. Fuck that. I found the user who bought it, traced to a business. Cool. I contacted him, explaining what happened. Turns out they did the same to him since he too was a seller. I told him that I'd honor the same price Ebay told me.... Ebay told me (seller) $300. Ebay told the buyer $350......!! Mind you, the fees are taken out of my $300, yet that $50 difference is Ebays scrape off the top. Obviously, I sold it to them for $300, and provided screenshots of what I was being told, and they did the same. We arranged the sale over Paypal and worked like a charm. And sure, Ebay's scamming as far as I can tell, everyone. But it's also reminded me to check on websites with a private mode browser and logged in, to see if there's funny games.
- NeuroCoder 3y ago
  It's amazing how quickly I recognized eBay descending into this sort of stuff from its inception. Maybe Amazon did so quickly too, but it's so obviously scummy that even as a teenager I got this impression. Kudos to you for going the extra mile
- 93po 3y ago
  Wow, this is wildly unethical and shitty. I'm never using ebay again.
  - MiddleEndian 3y ago
    https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-stalk-harass-couple-60-minutes-transcript-2023-08-13/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-st... They also allegedly hired someone to stalk and harass a couple who posted negative reviews of them online.
    - alsetmusic 3y ago
phendrenad2 3y ago
> Please somebody make a site with no payola Aliexpress?
- OJFord 3y ago
  Is that a joke? It's far more of a nightmare. Sort by price and it's only sorting on the 'from' price, which isn't even necessarily the same product, doesn't include the shipping, and doesn't account for wild variation (in not just base price but also inexplicably shipping) when you change quantity or colour.
  - meatmanek 3y ago
    I would love to see some regulation (/ enforcement) that if you're going to lump different variations of a product together into one product listing, they need to be substantially identical in function and build. Two different colors of the same specification iPhone are fine to group together (arguably even different storage configurations), but it should be illegal to have a product listing show up on a search page with a price of $5 when the title and photos show the $100 actual product, and $5 is what you pay for the charger brick. This is extremely common on AliExpress, and obviously the FTC's reach is limited there, but it also happens not infrequently on Amazon and eBay.
- justinclift 3y ago
  Aliexpress has famously shitty search capability. Perhaps worse than Amazon's, and that's saying something.
gnicholas 3y ago
> Finally I lowered the price enough to get it sold. How much did you have to lower the price by? How did that compare to the ad-ransom you would have had to pay?
- cwoolfe 3y ago
  I sold it for $540 (without using ads). Same specs are selling on swappa.com for $620-$780. My eBay reputation is 100% and the MacBook was 100% clean. Perhaps I could have sold it for "more" using ads, but then all that money would just go to eBay, which I don't think is fair. They already take a final value fee anyway.
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    Terrible. Price gouging has been worsening the last couple of decades. Perhaps the last few centuries, or maybe it comes in waves, like resets when there’s a government revolution. People keep paying though. I’m at my city’s town center and I’ve never seen it so packed, except in the Black Friday-Christmas season. It’s a random Saturday. Some people have Monday off but that doesn’t explain the domestic shopping. Where is the money coming from?
deleted 3y ago
[deleted]
strangesmells02 3y ago
Craigslist exists and used to be the main go to for stuff like that. We gotta get the eyeballs back on craigslist
- cwoolfe 3y ago
  so many scams and fake people on Craigslist made me move to Facebook marketplace. They have better algorithms for detecting real people.
  - strangesmells02 3y ago
    you either let a company like eBay manipulate prices or you have to put up with some of the human element of a marketplace which does include scams. I have never once been a victim of a scam because I'm smart enough to identify them and be extremely careful when exchanging money on line. It's not difficult.
  - gymbeaux 3y ago
    FB Marketplace is better but still scams aplenty
windexh8er 3y ago
I used to sell items on eBay but I'm back to Craigslist and, for phones and other electronics, I've found Swappa to be a decent marketplace. On the latter products are moderated lightly for validity and, just like eBay, it was easy to build up a very positive reputation by selling items that are clean and have been taken care of well. I do go to eBay as a shopper for random items. But generally if it's on eBay I can find a better price by spending a few minutes looking for a site that specializes in those items. I lost trust in selling on eBay due to buyers that have tried to scam me in the past. Not sure if it's still that way on the sell side for individuals but I felt like, for a while, eBay was favoring high volume users vs being fair. I sold some SFPs that were way under market value about 6 years ago and had serial numbers of each unit in the auctiom. A guy bought them to resell in his shop a couple states away and he claimed they were defective when he received them. I told him to prove it in a switch showing the serial numbers and the error condition he claimed. He wouldn't do it so I told him to ship them back. He shipped me units with way different serial numbers but eBay still gave him his money back and charged me. That's the last time I sold on eBay.
- cwoolfe 3y ago
  Thanks for the swappa.com recommendation! I see that I could have made $100 more on my MacBook there than on eBay. Also it was WAY easier to find the exact specs. Thanks again!
gymbeaux 3y ago
It’s the same as Airbnb and Uber and Netflix and literally everything else… they throw in hidden fees and play psychology (eg foot in the door technique) to get us to pay more and more without us realizing it. They preach convenience, but unfortunately use that to their advantage to get our guard down. You pay $X to not have to worry about something/get a service, but when you’re not paying attention they jack up prices. I looked the other day and it’s like $19/month for Spotify Family now… when did that happen? It was like $14 when I signed up. But all my playlists are set up on Spotify… what’s more, all the fam’s are too. Huge PITA to move to Apple Music.
- vineyardmike 3y ago
  I hate to tell ya, but Spotify will eternally be stuck between unprofitability and price raises. Spotify has to negotiate with record labels who mostly act as a unified block, and they have leverage because Spotify needs all major labels or else customers can’t find all their music. No one is a “interscope” loyalist - they’re loyal to artists. This gives them power to basically demand >100% of the profit margin. That’s why they’re trying to get into other markets like podcasts. Record labels get ~50% of revenue, then Apple/Google app stores get 30% from some customers - that doesn’t leave a lot of room for Spotify. That’s also why YouTube music and Apple Music will be the only long term players - but they need Spotify. They can take a loss to keep customers in the ecosystem BUT they need Spotify to always be the first to break to keep rates tolerable.

granzymes 3y ago

You are touching on a point that Benedict Evans has made quite eloquently in the past: >There was a joke a few years ago that rent is the new [Customer Acquisition Cost], and that now applies to everything. The [Total Addressable Market] for search ads is not ‘advertising’ (let alone online advertising) but everything that is spent to reach and serve a customer, starting with retail rents. This applies to Amazon, but even more to Google - you can ask whether Google’s ads are ‘advertising’ or ‘marketing’, but also ask whether the TAM for buying placement in Google search results is ‘advertising’, ‘marketing’ or just its customers’ operating margins. How do you reach a consumer? Do you spend your budget on TV ads or search ads, or on retail rents, or on giving retailers a margin versus selling direct, or giving the retailer a better price for better placement, or free shipping, or a better returns policy? Everything below P&G’s COGS line is up for grabs. https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-think-about-amazon-advertising https://www.ben-evans.com/benedictevans/2023/3/6/ways-to-thi... There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable. It's a scaled version of the same way a landlord will raise rents on a profitable storefront.

codexb 3y ago
It's going to be a bit harder to win on this end I think. Manufacturer's require retailers to agree to this type of restriction all the time time (and it's mandatory, not voluntary) like it is with Amazon.
simpaticoder 3y ago
>There will be no site that does not offer advertising, because advertising allows the site to determine which sellers can afford to pay more while still being profitable. It's still possible that people exist who charge "what it's worth" rather than "what they can get". Those people can still make a fine living off of a two sided market place through flat transaction fees. Craigslist is an example that comes immediately to mind. Smart market participants are already punishing providers that maximize profit with payola, which is leading to success of new smaller niche markets - reverb.com comes to mind, or bricklink.com or alibris.com. That is not to say the market of markets is "solving" this problem - we probably want more consumer protection law - but it does show that your startement about ads is, strictly speaking, false.
- afiori 3y ago
  But you need the entire marketplace to follow that rule. You cannot charge "what it's worth" on amazon because you either pay the ad tax or you compete for the lowest price.
- alsetmusic 3y ago
  Craigslist is a hell hole. I stopped selling there because even when I was practically giving electronics away (to prevent buyer’s remorse), people still emailed insultingly low offers. I just gave up on the site maybe five years ago.
  - simpaticoder 3y ago
    CL has gotten much much worse over the last few years. So has FB Marketplace. Perhaps a hidden value of the payola approach is to avoid these outcomes. Or perhaps every marketplace declines like this. It may be that private secondary market online market is simply not a sustainable business. That would be unfortunate, but interesting.

pierat 3y ago

Thats not the only thing I caught, at least with Ebay. During the pandemic, I decided to sell a bunch of a component I had stockpiled. (Im not a scalper. I got the parts when my dad died.). I put them for sale with $100 minimum, auction. They ended up selling for $300. I was definitely happy.... until Ebay refused to send me my money, and instead demanded access to a bank account, after the sale was complete. Fuck that. I found the user who bought it, traced to a business. Cool. I contacted him, explaining what happened. Turns out they did the same to him since he too was a seller. I told him that I'd honor the same price Ebay told me.... Ebay told me (seller) $300. Ebay told the buyer $350......!! Mind you, the fees are taken out of my $300, yet that $50 difference is Ebays scrape off the top. Obviously, I sold it to them for $300, and provided screenshots of what I was being told, and they did the same. We arranged the sale over Paypal and worked like a charm. And sure, Ebay's scamming as far as I can tell, everyone. But it's also reminded me to check on websites with a private mode browser and logged in, to see if there's funny games.

NeuroCoder 3y ago
It's amazing how quickly I recognized eBay descending into this sort of stuff from its inception. Maybe Amazon did so quickly too, but it's so obviously scummy that even as a teenager I got this impression. Kudos to you for going the extra mile
93po 3y ago
Wow, this is wildly unethical and shitty. I'm never using ebay again.
- MiddleEndian 3y ago
  https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-stalk-harass-couple-60-minutes-transcript-2023-08-13/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/investigation-ebay-employees-st... They also allegedly hired someone to stalk and harass a couple who posted negative reviews of them online.
  - alsetmusic 3y ago

phendrenad2 3y ago

> Please somebody make a site with no payola Aliexpress?

OJFord 3y ago
Is that a joke? It's far more of a nightmare. Sort by price and it's only sorting on the 'from' price, which isn't even necessarily the same product, doesn't include the shipping, and doesn't account for wild variation (in not just base price but also inexplicably shipping) when you change quantity or colour.
- meatmanek 3y ago
  I would love to see some regulation (/ enforcement) that if you're going to lump different variations of a product together into one product listing, they need to be substantially identical in function and build. Two different colors of the same specification iPhone are fine to group together (arguably even different storage configurations), but it should be illegal to have a product listing show up on a search page with a price of $5 when the title and photos show the $100 actual product, and $5 is what you pay for the charger brick. This is extremely common on AliExpress, and obviously the FTC's reach is limited there, but it also happens not infrequently on Amazon and eBay.
justinclift 3y ago
Aliexpress has famously shitty search capability. Perhaps worse than Amazon's, and that's saying something.

gnicholas 3y ago

> Finally I lowered the price enough to get it sold. How much did you have to lower the price by? How did that compare to the ad-ransom you would have had to pay?

cwoolfe 3y ago
I sold it for $540 (without using ads). Same specs are selling on swappa.com for $620-$780. My eBay reputation is 100% and the MacBook was 100% clean. Perhaps I could have sold it for "more" using ads, but then all that money would just go to eBay, which I don't think is fair. They already take a final value fee anyway.
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  Terrible. Price gouging has been worsening the last couple of decades. Perhaps the last few centuries, or maybe it comes in waves, like resets when there’s a government revolution. People keep paying though. I’m at my city’s town center and I’ve never seen it so packed, except in the Black Friday-Christmas season. It’s a random Saturday. Some people have Monday off but that doesn’t explain the domestic shopping. Where is the money coming from?

deleted 3y ago

[deleted]

strangesmells02 3y ago

Craigslist exists and used to be the main go to for stuff like that. We gotta get the eyeballs back on craigslist

cwoolfe 3y ago
so many scams and fake people on Craigslist made me move to Facebook marketplace. They have better algorithms for detecting real people.
- strangesmells02 3y ago
  you either let a company like eBay manipulate prices or you have to put up with some of the human element of a marketplace which does include scams. I have never once been a victim of a scam because I'm smart enough to identify them and be extremely careful when exchanging money on line. It's not difficult.
- gymbeaux 3y ago
  FB Marketplace is better but still scams aplenty

windexh8er 3y ago

I used to sell items on eBay but I'm back to Craigslist and, for phones and other electronics, I've found Swappa to be a decent marketplace. On the latter products are moderated lightly for validity and, just like eBay, it was easy to build up a very positive reputation by selling items that are clean and have been taken care of well. I do go to eBay as a shopper for random items. But generally if it's on eBay I can find a better price by spending a few minutes looking for a site that specializes in those items. I lost trust in selling on eBay due to buyers that have tried to scam me in the past. Not sure if it's still that way on the sell side for individuals but I felt like, for a while, eBay was favoring high volume users vs being fair. I sold some SFPs that were way under market value about 6 years ago and had serial numbers of each unit in the auctiom. A guy bought them to resell in his shop a couple states away and he claimed they were defective when he received them. I told him to prove it in a switch showing the serial numbers and the error condition he claimed. He wouldn't do it so I told him to ship them back. He shipped me units with way different serial numbers but eBay still gave him his money back and charged me. That's the last time I sold on eBay.

cwoolfe 3y ago
Thanks for the swappa.com recommendation! I see that I could have made $100 more on my MacBook there than on eBay. Also it was WAY easier to find the exact specs. Thanks again!

gymbeaux 3y ago

It’s the same as Airbnb and Uber and Netflix and literally everything else… they throw in hidden fees and play psychology (eg foot in the door technique) to get us to pay more and more without us realizing it. They preach convenience, but unfortunately use that to their advantage to get our guard down. You pay $X to not have to worry about something/get a service, but when you’re not paying attention they jack up prices. I looked the other day and it’s like $19/month for Spotify Family now… when did that happen? It was like $14 when I signed up. But all my playlists are set up on Spotify… what’s more, all the fam’s are too. Huge PITA to move to Apple Music.

vineyardmike 3y ago
I hate to tell ya, but Spotify will eternally be stuck between unprofitability and price raises. Spotify has to negotiate with record labels who mostly act as a unified block, and they have leverage because Spotify needs all major labels or else customers can’t find all their music. No one is a “interscope” loyalist - they’re loyal to artists. This gives them power to basically demand >100% of the profit margin. That’s why they’re trying to get into other markets like podcasts. Record labels get ~50% of revenue, then Apple/Google app stores get 30% from some customers - that doesn’t leave a lot of room for Spotify. That’s also why YouTube music and Apple Music will be the only long term players - but they need Spotify. They can take a loss to keep customers in the ecosystem BUT they need Spotify to always be the first to break to keep rates tolerable.