alt Hacker NewsThe biggest headache has always been fraud, eBay gets if from both sides and it's a pretty intractable problem to solve as the middle man.
The biggest headache has always been fraud, eBay gets if from both sides and it's a pretty intractable problem to solve as the middle man.
That's what those huge ~10% final value fees they charge are for. And other revenue such as sponsored listings (pay to boost your item in search results).
As long as they keep the fraud volume below like 5% of sales, I feel like it's just a numbers game, where they just need to get as much sales onto their platform as possible to give them enough operating margin to cover their costs (including fraud) and provide profit.
Admittely, I have no idea how well they're doing at that, I haven't looked at their financial statements or anything.