eBay Stores Could Be Doomed

Phil Dunn on eBay Seller Central thinks that entrepreneurs with eBay Stores have a doomed business model:

eBay Stores offered many sellers an easy to list fixed price goods and move unsold auction items to a static listing with cheap fees and long durations (e.g. 30 days or good til canceled). But the model could be doomed, because of simple findability trends.

Let me put that a little more simply. If buyers can find your goods easily – outside of eBay.. through search engines, for example – you don’t need the eBay platform to sell (or Amazon, for that matter). Google AdWords make this possible, and a new Google service called Pay-Per-Action for AdWords makes the AdWords expense model even cheaper for ecommerce sellers. GigaOm wrote about this findability trend in one his most recent posts, titled “Is Amazon.com catching the eBay Disease.â€?