>eBay Holds Its Turf Against Google: “The company’s core auction business had suffered last year from sellers dumping slow-selling and patently unwanted merchandise in their eBay stores, as well as pricing some items too high for eBay’s bargain-hunting audience.”

eBay sellers have to pass on the cost of doing business on eBay to the buyers. We have listing fees and final value fees (FVF) for sold items. There are also fees we pay for unsold listings which creates your “sell-through rate”. Overall, I think eBay is doing a good of bringing visitors to the site. Froogle is still the best ROI (no fee 🙂 ), but eBay also provides a very good ROI. As eBay continues to charge more in fees, two things will happen:

1) Low margin and low dollar items will be marketed elsewhere (e.g. web store, no fee sites)
2) Sellers will list only items that sell and exclude non-performers from the eBay listings. More stuff people want, less crap on the site. How could that not be a good thing?