https://www.itnews.com.au/news/adevinta-wins-auction-to-buy-…
https://www.cnet.com/news/ebay-to-sell-off-its-classified-ad…
Gumtree was owned by eBay and now, eBay has sold off Gumtree to Adevinta.
Not sure what this may mean for Gumtree. I use it quite a bit for local stuff that is too much of a hassle to buy/sell via mail.
Surely they have to be aware that the gumtree audience is primarily only there because of the absence of selling fees — making monetisation almost impossible — and even then, that crowd has since migrated over to facebook marketplace where there is even less friction for casual selling.
Gumtree needs to innovate quick. Their app is slow and clunky — uploading photos takes forever, and the app and messaging system is glitchy and antiquated. Good luck to Adevinta…
Ebay originally bought out Gumtree as it was causing Rapid erosion to its sales. It purposely did not develop Gumtree as this would have caused more damage to eBay’s sales.
It has kept Gumtree clunky so that eBay would appear as a better platform.
There are many ways to monetize a website and charging fees to sellers is just one way.
It has a large database of sellers and buyers whom it can mine information for resale as as well as providing advertisers with very targeted information.
As it is clunky there may also the the ability to offer two levels of service to sellers and buyers - the free service plus a premium service. If the premium service is appropriately priced then it could attract lots of paying members which would be another revenue stream.
There are lots of ways it can generate revenue. It becomes a balancing act of generating revenue and keeping people selling. Youtube went a similar path. It was free then, and now there is now a premium option which requires a subscription.
It will be interesting to see how much damage now Gumtree will do to eBay’s sales subject to whatever restrictions eBay may have placed on the sale of Gumtree.
Well, eBay still has 33% control and 44% equity in the company, so I imagine that it will do no damage to eBay at all.
Interesting that speculators are saying this could make eBay an acquisition target now that it's smaller (with a $40bn market cap but still) and more focused on something it's good at - Alibaba could want an established marketplace…
I 100% agree with you, but what that tells me is that Ebay found it way more profitable to be a front for dropshippers than to be an outlet for individuals selling secondhand goods. The same thing is probably going to happen with Gumtree, and in many categories it has already happened.
I wonder if it was a face to face cash sale or Adevinta used Paypal?
Ebay met them at Maccas - they don't want no paypal claim backs.
Adevinta will be SNAD! once they seem what is under the hood
Adevinta was working away on an oil rig at the time so they sent a courier around to pick up Gumtree.
But they paid too much so Ebay has to send the overpayment back ASAP
In before "sold Gumtree via PayPal and buyer has requested a reversal of the payment."
Might be time to build a better version so it's ready when the exodus happens. Or maybe The Trading Post could reinvent themselves.
Ebay charged 12.5% for final value fee ( even when you subscribed to ebay store )
Also Paypal ( belonged to Ebay ) charged 2.9% fee
Postage fee was also reimbursed same final value fee ( 12.5% ) to ebay as well
And anything goes wrong, sellers would be the one to blame and force to take the return and issue the refund. Even if it's not their fault ( lost/slow postage, or just when buyers feel they don't want it anymore in 30 days)
Not so surprise when ebay lost so many sales as they did not pay much attentions to sellers at all
16% fee is really making a difference especially when selling anything >$1000
Ebay jacked up their price before the sale to Adevinta.
Therefore eBay now own 44% of:
Adevinta
Autotrader
Carsguide
Gumtree
Not too surprised eBay is struggling nowadays. What was once a place to pick up nice cheap niche things/collectibles/second hand goods exploded into mainstream daily products and lately ruined by utter garbage and endless rebranded tat no matter what you search for. Coupled with high fees for selling stuff it's become less and less attractive to use compared to Amazon/Walmart in US etc. Barely even use it nowadays and the whole Plus thing is laughable here (doesn't exist in UK).
Will be interesting to see what happens to Gumtree, I suspect not much change for a good while but the monetisation will be pushed heavily now that eBay backing is gone.