Taobao vs. eBay EachNet: A War for Hearts and Minds with a 'Free Forever' Strategy

Published on August 13, 202516 min read

What you'll learn:

• 'Free Forever' isn't the end goal; it's the start of value-based filtering.
• A sense of community is the catalyst for trust: let transactions begin with a conversation.
• When the main gate is blocked, surround it from countless small paths.
• Use service density to dismantle the cold heights of a brand.

After the rain in Hangzhou, the air was thick with the smell of damp earth and new beginnings. Inside a stuffy office, a whiteboard had been wiped clean again and again, until only one bold, defiant phrase remained:

"Free, for three years."

No. Someone walked up, took a marker, and drew two stark lines through "for three years," replacing it with a single word: "Forever."

Imagine your opponent is a market giant, having bought up all the prime advertising real estate and solidified its reign with a mature fee-based system. Your only weapons are "Free Forever" and "a marketplace where you can chat." How do you fight that war?

What you'll learn from Jack Ma's story:

Free doesn't mean no revenue: First, trade freeness for users' time and density, then stratify them based on service value.
Community is the lubricant for commerce: When buyers and sellers can talk, return, and reason, trust is born.
When blocked, change the battlefield: Employ a "surround the cities from the countryside" strategy using word-of-mouth and long-tail channels.
Plain-language rules & minute-level response: Use service density and warmth to counter the cold altitude of a competitor's brand.

Behind the Blockade: The Summer of No Ad Space

The Gates of the Portals Were Welded Shut

It felt as if the market's coffers had been sealed overnight. The major web portals had signed exclusive deals, locking down every prime spot on their homepages, channel pages, and even in email banners. A marketing colleague spread a stack of rejection emails across the table, his voice weary. "It's not about the budget. There are simply no slots left."

"Then we change the battlefield," Jack Ma said. He circled areas on a map that the giant overlooked: bus stops, subway cars, office building elevators, university forums, and an alliance of thousands of personal websites.

The Rope Ladder of Word-of-Mouth and the Webmaster Alliance

They didn't opt for a head-on collision. Instead, they drafted a "Webmaster Win-Win Plan," offering cash rebates for traffic referrals and tickets to offline e-commerce workshops. This gesture of goodwill turned these small, neglected traffic sources into oxygen lines for Taobao. Soon, small forums buzzed with posts like "How to open your free shop in 20 minutes" and "Tips for communicating on AliWangWang."

It wasn't a single, deafening cannon blast. It was thousands of rope ladders being silently thrown onto the castle walls from all directions.

The Long-Tail Channel List (A Fragment from the Playbook)

Personal Blogs: Exchanging links and contributing articles on e-commerce.
Campus BBS: Collaborating with moderators to launch "My Startup Story" contests.
Niche Forums & QQ Groups: Hosting "Late-Night Q&A for New Shop Owners" in fashion and electronics communities.
Offline Penetration: Using community bulletin boards and elevator posters to reach users in the most basic ways.
Seller-driven Broadcasting: Encouraging sellers to use a "Latest News from This Shop" section as their own broadcast channel.

The Other Side of Free: Order, Not Chaos

"First Invite Them In, Then Draw the Roads"

The moment the "Free Forever" banner went up, sellers poured in like a flood. The customer service dashboard lit up like a switchboard in a crisis, and the system nearly crashed. While celebrating the user surge, the team immediately wrote the first priority after "Free" on the whiteboard: Establish Order.

"We are a marketplace, not a junkyard," Ma declared. "Free gets people in the door, but we must draw the roads and set the rules clearly."

Weekly "Catalog Freeze": The system would randomly audit listings each week. Duplicate posts, stolen images, and items with missing key parameters were sent back for correction.
"20-Minute Onboarding Class" for New Sellers: A mandatory video for all newcomers, covering image dimensions, standard title formats, and, most importantly, how to handle disputes.
"Whitelist" for Buyer Complaints: A credit system was built for reliable buyers, whose complaints were routed directly to senior support staff with a promise of a minute-level response.

He added a summary at the bottom of the whiteboard: "Free, to pave the way for what's not free."

The 20-Minute Onboarding Class Outline

Images: Minimum of three main images, with the longest side at 800px. Must include one detail shot with a scale reference.
Titles: No keyword stuffing. Standard format: Category + Core Selling Point/Material + Use Case.
Description: Must include delivery times, after-sales policy, and a shipping fee template.
Disputes: Talk first, platform later. If three attempts to communicate via WangWang fail, submit screenshots as evidence for platform intervention.
Communication: Reference scripts for the first three sentences on WangWang, and a blacklist of forbidden terms.

Stratification Wasn't "Charging," It Was "Priority"

When the daily influx of new products became a data flood, "free" was no longer efficient. They quickly introduced a logic for layered exposure:

Basic Tier: All compliant products are visible and searchable by everyone.
Priority Tier: Higher search rankings, richer display formats, and more official inquiry referrals from the platform.

How did one ascend from Basic to Priority? The sole criterion was "Service Score"—a dynamic score calculated from WangWang response time, positive review rate, repeat customer percentage, and listing completeness. Sellers quickly understood the game: the better you treat your customers, the better the platform treats you. An organic sense of order began to emerge.

The Weekly "Service Score" Dashboard

Median WangWang Response Time (minutes)
30-Day Dispute Rate (%)
Repeat Customer Percentage (%)
Listing Completeness (automated score)

Sense of Community: Turning "People in a List" into "the Stall Owner Next Door"

The Bubbles of WangWang and the Value of a Return Customer

"Before you buy, would you like to chat with the seller?" This option was placed in the most prominent position on the page. They discovered that the moment a buyer clicked on the blue water-drop icon of the chat tool, "AliWangWang," the conversion rate skyrocketed.

It was like walking into a bustling bazaar. You weren't just ordering from a cold product list; you could greet the stall owner: "Hey boss, can you give me a better price?" "I need this tonight, can you ship it now?"

One night, a seller replied to a customer: "Sorry, just got home. I'll go to the warehouse and measure it for you right now." The next day, that customer not only placed the order but became a loyal patron.

"Repeat customer," a term full of human warmth, was formally added to the platform's KPI dashboard for the first time, right alongside active users and Gross Merchandise Volume.

Write the Rules in Plain Language

They rewrote all the dense legal terms into simple, conversational Q&A.

Original: "This platform provides third-party escrow payment services. Upon the buyer's confirmation of receipt, funds will be settled to the seller."
Plain Language Version: "When you buy something, Taobao holds your money for you. Once you get your item and you're happy with it, we'll release the money to the seller. You can rest easy."
Original: "In the event of a trade dispute, both parties shall engage in friendly negotiation. If negotiation fails, an application for platform intervention may be filed."
Plain Language Version: "If you have a problem, talk it out with the seller on WangWang first. If they ignore you three times, don't worry. Send us the chat log, and we'll step in to judge."

The language of the site transformed from "legal terms" to "a conversation between neighbors." The result: a significant drop in complaints and a steady climb in conversion rates.

The Showdown: A Race for "Time" and "Hearts"

"We Buy Time, They Buy Ad Space"

During that period, the competitor's ads ran on a loop on major TV stations and web portals. Their fee structure was rigorous, standardized, and global. Taobao's ads, in contrast, were scattered across the city like inconspicuous flyers.

But back in the office, the team obsessed over just three lifelines each week: the speed of new listings, the reach of WangWang conversations, and the first-response time for disputes. Only when all three lines trended upward for a full week were they allowed to crack open a beer on Friday night to celebrate.

The Two Letters That Changed the Game

One day, the customer service department forwarded two letters.

One was from an old seller in Hebei: "On other platforms, I had to calculate the cost for every single item I listed. Here on Taobao, I dare to put up a dozen new styles at once, because it's free to try and fail."

The other was from a new buyer in Shanghai: "The reason I dared to buy a lens worth several thousand yuan here wasn't because it was cheap. It was because I could talk to the seller anytime—about the lens, about the weather—and I could put my money in a neutral place called 'Alipay' first."

Jack Ma had the letters framed and hung on the main bulletin board. He told everyone: "Do you see? The first letter is about 'thickening the supply.' The second is about 'thickening the trust.' When both supply and trust are thick enough, we will have won."

In the End, Countless Small Paths Merged into a Great River

When the main gate is blocked, you pave your own roads.

They held "lawn talks" on university campuses, using candlelight to teach cash-strapped students how to open their first online store. On the wall of a wholesale market in the south of the city, a handwritten poster appeared: "Tonight at 8 PM: 5 Golden Rules for Communicating on WangWang."

"We are not fighting for the grandest gate," he said. "We are opening thousands of our own small paths."

Sellers began to create their own content spontaneously. They used screenshots of successful transactions, shipping labels, and even funny conversations with buyers to create "Latest News from This Shop" images, posting them in their sidebars like proud announcements on a neighborhood bulletin board. Soon, the stall owner next door started doing the same, and a wonderful sense of "neighborliness" emerged across the site.

The outcome of this war was already written. While the competitor was still counting how many cities its ads had covered, Taobao had already won countless hearts. They didn't win a war, because, from the beginning, they never saw it as one.

They just wanted to build a marketplace with the buzz of real life.

Key Takeaways

Free Isn't the End Goal: Free is the invitation card. The real moat is built with "Order" and "Stratification." Use freeness to acquire users, then use rules to filter for value.
Community Is Conversion: A platform where people can talk, return, and be heard has inherently higher trust. Let transactions begin with conversations, and let service drive loyalty.
Change-the-Battlefield Mindset: When mainstream channels are blocked, look to untapped markets and word-of-mouth for growth. The volume of your voice matters less than the density of your community.
Plain Language Rules × Minute-Level Service: Use extreme service density and human-centric communication to dismantle the cold fortress built by a competitor's brand and advertising budget.