if (time spent hunting) is large but (cost of item) is small, then it's a good deal. If (time spent hunting) is large but (cost of item) is almost the same as buying fixed price, then ...
When ebay was just starting out, it was mostly people who wanted to get rid of their junk. It was stuff they were going to throw out anyway, and it was laymen who didn't always know how much things were worth.
So it was possible to get really good deals if you looked.
Now that ebay is saturated by people who are selling as a business, the variability in prices is much less. It has become too much a hassle to do the auction process, and the benefit of doing so is no longer as great as it used to be.
The concept of online auctions is not a fad. Ebay just got colonized by scammers and spammers, that's all.
Some people enjoy the hunting! I think Omidyar decided that eBay would be huge when he watched people aggressively bid up his broken laser pointer. The one person I know who used eBay significantly talked way more about his sniping strategies than about what he ended up getting with them.
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It's simple math.
total cost = time spent hunting + cost of item.
if (time spent hunting) is large but (cost of item) is small, then it's a good deal. If (time spent hunting) is large but (cost of item) is almost the same as buying fixed price, then ...
When ebay was just starting out, it was mostly people who wanted to get rid of their junk. It was stuff they were going to throw out anyway, and it was laymen who didn't always know how much things were worth.
So it was possible to get really good deals if you looked.
Now that ebay is saturated by people who are selling as a business, the variability in prices is much less. It has become too much a hassle to do the auction process, and the benefit of doing so is no longer as great as it used to be.
The concept of online auctions is not a fad. Ebay just got colonized by scammers and spammers, that's all.
"total cost = time spent hunting + cost of item."
Some people enjoy the hunting! I think Omidyar decided that eBay would be huge when he watched people aggressively bid up his broken laser pointer. The one person I know who used eBay significantly talked way more about his sniping strategies than about what he ended up getting with them.