The votes in the 2018 Sellers Choice Awards have been tallied, and the full results of all 10 marketplaces are published in today’s issue. Thanks to everyone who took the time to first nominate marketplaces and then rate them.
The comments that readers left are our favorite part of Sellers Choice and show ecommerce grows ever more competitive as sellers work to make their listings visible in search results. We know your time is valuable, and so many of you provided thoughtful answers about the joys and pitfalls of selling on each venue. While we can’t guarantee marketplaces will take action on any of your advice, we can guarantee that they’re reading what you have to say.
It’s early in the year, but we’ve already seen some significant developments. eBay dropped the bombshell news that it would work towards becoming a payments intermediary, meaning buyers will pay eBay accounts instead of sellers’ accounts.
We’ve been looking to Etsy’s model to see how this could work for eBay. Etsy began requiring sellers to accept Etsy Payments as of May 2017.
PayPal said it did not wish to extend the operating agreement with eBay for a few reasons, one of which is because the OA restricts it from courting eBay rivals – it sees some big opportunities in going after what it called fast-growing, next-generation marketplaces. Presumably this includes Facebook (beyond Messenger), and could even include Amazon – imagine if you could use PayPal on Amazon?
eBay recently reported its fourth-quarter earnings, as did Amazon. eBay showed improvement, but it paled against Amazon’s strong growth rates. Etsy is next up to bat – stay tuned, we’ll bring you the results in Newsflash when they become available.
Thanks for reading.
