eBay Trends

eBay is a funny critter. I've been selling on eBay since 1998 and I still don't have a good feel for the ebb and flow of buyer engagement. Sometimes things are going gangbusters and sometimes the sales trickle to nothingness.
The tendency during periods of hot sales is to think that I'm a genius. Obviously. During slow times the general thought is that eBay is somehow screwing up my sales. Those bastards...what are they screwing around with now? Changing the search parameters again? Running a TV campaign targeted at Mongolian shepherds?
So it was interesting to come across this tidbit I found while playing around on Alexa. Comparing the last 6 months of traffic on eBay and Amazon...you'll see that both sites follow similar traffic patterns. I find the hard Alexa numbers of little use, because, let's face it, they're not very hard numbers. They are percentages of an unknown. But I do find the relationship between these two interesting, if only because it shows that seasonal fluctuations in traffic are for the most part out of their hands.