Last week eBay launched Partner to Sellers website “which serves as a central destination to spotlight our work with and for sellers. Our new site underpins our commitment to helping all sellers succeed and showcases the role we play in helping turn their entrepreneurial dreams and aspirations into reality.”
For the first time ever eBay has also released US state-by-state data showcasing sales and number of sellers statistics grouped by eBay.com sellers state of operation. Currently the data released is based on 2016 figures, but we are hoping eBay will continue to update it.
We have extracted the data, and ran a few simple analysis.
6.6 million American sellers sold $27.97 billion worth of goods in 2016. On average each seller sold $4,196 worth of goods.
California at 18.59 percent of the market is the largest state in terms of sales. It also accounted for 13.45 percent of sellers.
New York in second place is at 8.58 percent of the market in terms of sales. It accounted for 7.27 percent of sellers.
Top 5 states California, New York, Florida, Texas, New Jersey are leading in terms of sales. By adding the 6th state Illinois they together add up to 50 percent of the market.
The $27.97 billion US sales figure wasn’t mentioned ever before, as eBay does not break out sales by country. But it looks real, despite this being a marketing website. eBay’s total Gross Merchandise Volume (GMV) in 2016 was $79.45 billion. Roughly 60 percent of marketplace revenue comes from international, meaning other marketplaces than ebay.com, so half of GMV is likely generated internationally too. Some of the sales on the domestic eBay are from international sellers also. All of this information combined together loosely adds up to the $27.97 billion figure.
The $4,196 average yearly sales figure means few of the 6.6 million sellers are able to treat eBay as a full-time job - many of those sellers sold a few used items. 20 percent of top sellers make up 80 percent of eBay’s sales, so the average sales figure hides the long-tail distribution. By comparison Amazon has reported that it has 100,000 sellers with over $100,000 sales. It is hard to estimate this for eBay, but we think it likely has a similar number of sellers who can treat it as a job.
Below is the full data for each state, as provided by the Partner to Sellers website. We have sorted it by sales volume, and included percentage of share of the totals.
| State | Sales | % total | Number of sellers | % total |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| California | $5,200,000,000 | 18.59% | 897,000 | 13.45% |
| New York | $2,400,000,000 | 8.58% | 485,000 | 7.27% |
| Florida | $2,300,000,000 | 8.22% | 489,000 | 7.33% |
| Texas | $1,600,000,000 | 5.72% | 423,000 | 6.34% |
| New Jersey | $1,300,000,000 | 4.65% | 234,000 | 3.51% |
| Illinois | $1,200,000,000 | 4.29% | 284,000 | 4.26% |
| Pennsylvania | $1,100,000,000 | 3.93% | 304,000 | 4.56% |
| Michigan | $939,000,000 | 3.36% | 216,000 | 3.24% |
| Ohio | $938,000,000 | 3.35% | 245,000 | 3.67% |
| Georgia | $753,000,000 | 2.69% | 206,000 | 3.09% |
| North Carolina | $676,000,000 | 2.42% | 201,000 | 3.01% |
| Washington | $618,000,000 | 2.21% | 159,000 | 2.38% |
| Arizona | $609,000,000 | 2.18% | 128,000 | 1.92% |
| Massachusetts | $601,000,000 | 2.15% | 155,000 | 2.32% |
| Minnesota | $495,000,000 | 1.77% | 107,000 | 1.60% |
| Indiana | $485,000,000 | 1.73% | 132,000 | 1.98% |
| Tennessee | $482,000,000 | 1.72% | 126,000 | 1.89% |
| Virginia | $463,000,000 | 1.65% | 183,000 | 2.74% |
| Wisconsin | $444,000,000 | 1.59% | 118,000 | 1.77% |
| Missouri | $424,000,000 | 1.52% | 114,000 | 1.71% |
| Maryland | $413,000,000 | 1.48% | 134,000 | 2.01% |
| Colorado | $377,000,000 | 1.35% | 114,000 | 1.71% |
| Oregon | $366,000,000 | 1.31% | 93,000 | 1.39% |
| Oklahoma | $359,000,000 | 1.28% | 56,000 | 0.84% |
| Nevada | $294,000,000 | 1.05% | 60,000 | 0.90% |
| Connecticut | $292,000,000 | 1.04% | 93,000 | 1.39% |
| Utah | $287,000,000 | 1.03% | 58,000 | 0.87% |
| South Carolina | $252,000,000 | 0.90% | 89,000 | 1.33% |
| Kentucky | $234,000,000 | 0.84% | 82,000 | 1.23% |
| Iowa | $208,000,000 | 0.74% | 54,000 | 0.81% |
| Alabama | $199,000,000 | 0.71% | 79,000 | 1.18% |
| Nebraska | $172,000,000 | 0.61% | 31,000 | 0.46% |
| New Hampshire | $166,000,000 | 0.59% | 36,000 | 0.54% |
| Kansas | $162,000,000 | 0.58% | 52,000 | 0.78% |
| Arkansas | $126,000,000 | 0.45% | 44,000 | 0.66% |
| Idaho | $115,000,000 | 0.41% | 31,000 | 0.46% |
| Louisiana | $113,000,000 | 0.40% | 62,000 | 0.93% |
| Delaware | $107,000,000 | 0.38% | 22,000 | 0.33% |
| Rhode Island | $93,000,000 | 0.33% | 25,000 | 0.37% |
| Mississippi | $85,000,000 | 0.30% | 37,000 | 0.55% |
| West Virginia | $85,000,000 | 0.30% | 34,000 | 0.51% |
| Maine | $73,000,000 | 0.26% | 31,000 | 0.46% |
| New Mexico | $71,000,000 | 0.25% | 28,000 | 0.42% |
| Montana | $49,000,000 | 0.18% | 19,000 | 0.28% |
| Hawaii | $45,000,000 | 0.16% | 20,000 | 0.30% |
| District of Columbia | $41,000,000 | 0.15% | 12,000 | 0.18% |
| Vermont | $41,000,000 | 0.15% | 15,000 | 0.22% |
| South Dakota | $37,000,000 | 0.13% | 13,000 | 0.19% |
| North Dakota | $34,000,000 | 0.12% | 11,000 | 0.16% |
| Wyoming | $19,000,000 | 0.07% | 9,000 | 0.13% |
| Puerto Rico | $18,000,000 | 0.06% | 8,000 | 0.12% |
| Alaska | $16,000,000 | 0.06% | 9,000 | 0.13% |
