Effective later in the year Amazon sellers fulfilling their own shipments will be forced to accept all returns - items they sell will be "automatically authorized" for return. As much as this change has caused an outburst of anger in seller forums there is going to be more of these in the future.
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There is a lot of talk about Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and others, but most seem to forget that what's driving those leading retailers is the millions of sellers in their marketplaces. This is what started Marketplace Pulse, and we continue to look at, analyze, and talk about marketplaces as if they were economies by themselves.
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Based on our research since the start of the year Etsy has had half a million new sellers join the marketplace. 494,123 to be exact. This amounts to over 70,000 new shops every month, making 2017 the fastest growing year so far.
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According to Amazon's second quarter earnings, company's "other" revenue - believed to be made up mostly of advertising - category grew faster than anything else. It might take years for the advertising business to grow big enough for Amazon to consider breaking it out as a category of its own. But most estimate that by 2018 it will reach north of $5 billion yearly run rate.
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For a lot of brands this is a big problem since on one hand they can refuse to sell on Amazon, and give up major source of extra revenue, or sell on Amazon, but have no way to interact with customers directly or indirectly.
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eBay 2017 Q2 results mostly met expectations, but at the same time provided little to be excited about. Shares fell as a result. eBay is successfully attracting new buyers, but those buyers buy less and/or buy only once.
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Amazon updated the Buyer-Seller Messaging system on March 28th to allow customers to opt-out of unwanted emails from sellers. Now asking for reviews was deemed nonessential, and customers could put a stop to it. Because of this since March the marketplace sellers feedback volume has decreased by 37 percent.
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eBay has published a brand new "Inside the eBay Economy" report, highlighting a number of new metrics about eBay's marketplaces in Europe. They key highlight is that eBay now has 1,875 sellers turning over £1m or €1m. This number has risen by 50 percent since 2013.
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Retail Global announced that Marketplace Pulse founder Juozas Kaziukėnas will take the stage and present a keynote at Retail Global Las Vegas 2017. Joe's keynote, titled "The Future of Marketplaces", will focus on the trends in leading global marketplaces. It will build on top of our published articles and research, and also include exclusive findings.
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Etsy has recently implemented Etsy Payments, an improved and rebranded Direct Checkout, requiring all sellers to use it. This has caused a big uproar among sellers, some of which felt like they were being forced to use a lesser option. Starting June 1st any shop without Etsy Payments enabled was suspended.
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