eBay Announces Fee Changes, Will Eliminate Store Format

by: fractal

I both buy and sell on ebay.  From a buyer's perspective, this sucks the big one.  Why not just tell the Chinese that they get 100 free scams per month?  

Search is hopeless - I even entered miles from my home and got mostly listings of drek from China  rather than quality product.  Ebay used to be my go to place for findings, gold and silver wire and beads but now it is poor and about to become unusable.  And no, I'm not picking on the poor Chinese - I have been burned several times by sterling that was merely plated and will not go there again.

As for selling - that 0.99 will be great for low end books that half.com is no longer the place for or other odd bits and bobs.  That is if my auctions are ever even seen when buried in a flood of duplicated store listings.  Otherwise, I see much more Bonanzle in my future!

by: Kay

This is the final nail in the coffin for me as far as eBay goes.  I have rarely been on the site in the past year and recently decided to give it one last try.  I am totally done.  I hope that all the people who have all their eggs in the eBay basket will start looking at other venues.  I think that eBay is truly on their last leg and will soon be only a memory

by: Carl G.

My concern with the ???FREE??? 99 cent listings cap of 100 per month lays with the sellers with multiple ebay names/accounts.

What's to stop a seller from listing 100 under one name...100 under another account name and so forth???

I can see someone drowning the boards with these...

Just my .02

Carl G.

by: Margaret

Not so fast folks - you MUST read between the lines

did you realize that if you lose your PS or TR rating the system will automatically revert you to the higher fees?  With the one way and biased against sellers feedback system - one unhappy buyer could cost you alot of money

by: Bev

Why doesn't eBay just say that they are not interested in small business sellers and be done with it?

by: NOISE 2010

Now
Only
Idiots
Support
Ebay

I hope someone does the math and gets the quotes we know ill come then makes a blockbuster video about this.

All I can really say is that with the comparisons of Johnny Dontknowhow to some military commander leading in crisis from the trenches yadda yadda, his opponents couldn't ask for anything more. No wonder Jeff Bezos can't stop laughing. First, divide and conquer your own forces (buyer Vs seller) then pour gasoline onto the fire.
(lies, more lies, fee hikes, reductions in quality of service for more $$$)

Go ahead already Donahoe, drop the big one and get it over with. Geesh!

by: fruity

Doesn't matter, if they are targeting payment holds/reserves based on the categories now to manage risk, this will open up a flood and only end up getting our money stolen with reserves. Analyst called this a carrot. Also this is good for the entry small sellers, very very casual. But it provides no competitive landscape for the small seasoned seller, which apparently is the favorite target for paypal reserves.


I imagine this is so ebay can have a new round of "small business" whom they get to parade in front of Congress with their lobbyist agenda.

by: Katiyana

Well I've been expecting this like many store sellers, just needed the numbers to do the calculations.

I'm on the borderline between Basic vs Premium @ 210 listings on the site.  I'm looking at a 153% increase in listing fees with the transition.  Now the wild card will be if there is a corresponding increase in sales to cover that fee increase, I'll be no better off or worse off than I was before.

However, if there is not an increase in sales, then I'm upside down.  I will probably give it a few months and see how things are going.  If they are upside down, then I would probably change my listing strategy to only list seasonal items in the 2-3 months prior to the holiday period rather than my entire selection year round.  This will cost me some sales as I do get out of season sales now, but I would be able to bring the fees back down to current levels if I dropped my listings from the current 210 level down to about 35 on the site at any given time.

So contingency plan is prepared - now we wait and see what happens after March...

by: RBH

All,
Another round of news from eBay that I admit is a lot to digest in an hour... Here are some links that might clear up some of the confusion:

http://thebestplacetosell.ebay.com/faq/#3

htt
p://ebayinkblog.com (video interviews with Dinesh Lathi and Lynda Talgo)

More info at http://thebestplacetosell.ebay.com

My email is ebayink@ebay.com and you can also follow the conversation on Twitter using #eBaySR. My Twitter handle is @ebayinkblog.

Cheers,
RBH

by: dcsbodyjewelry

I think it ROYALLY SUCK that ebay is completely doing away with 3, 5 and 7 day fixed price core listings. Now that all FP listings will be 30 days in length, the exposure our FP listings get will suck big time getting buried in search. Heck, some cats already have over 1 million listings. How the hell can you get exposure when your listings are buried 1 million deep?


This blows!

by: fruity

and Jim Goldman of CNBC said this morning just the press release points, didn't bother to do anything beyond saying what he's told. That ebay is reducing fees for sellers. Nothing about the changes in store formats or that those store owners would have to pay higher fees unless they paid larger subscription costs to ebay

which incidently, I think I know why, because if you pay for the priviledge of owning a "store" then you can't complain about your listings not being found when they totally elimiate the front end fees.

by: Cathi

Yep one unhappy customer CAN cost you a lot of money and they KNOW that. BUT one very angry seller can take that unhappy scamming buyer to COURT for all the money they have cost them, and use eBay as the conduit, cause eBAy gave them permission to slander someone.  Just a few times, let's get these BUYERS where it hurts and hold them responsible for a "1" DSR for shipping time when we have proof the package left the same business day and they gave the seller a 1. Would only take a few of those lawsuits to sink eBAy's already on the way down ship.
Pretty amazing how much damage one educated idiot can do, huh?  And btw, I also have an MBA...

by: fruity

There goes Idiot extraordinare corporate spokesperson Ebay Stink who is again trying to control the "noise", its clear they want to control the perception

you are anti small business Ebay, That's the backstory to all this.

by: buck efay

At first glance, it looked like a deal then you realize FREE listings for under $1 just means every jerkoff in the world will be listing TRASH with high shipping & .99 start price. Plus they have the NERVE to raise BIN listing fees? What a bunch of friggin morons. Ebay is truly finished for me.

by: fruity

oh, ebay I see the antitrust connection. I'm gonna go write me a another letter.

by: CHET

Every time eBay makes changes, it costs me dozens of hours of time revising listings, but in the end I always benefit because I adapt and play the game. I have 10,000 listings in three eBay stores and it's going to be a nightmare over the next couple of months to make necessary changes, but I expect to make more money.

First of all, I will consolidate all my listings from three stores into one. Having multiple stores is no longer cost-effective. I will save $1200 a year by closing two stores.

Having all the listings in the core site with search should result in more sales for those who don't leave eBay out of frustration. I already take a thousand most expensive items and list them as fixed price with 30 day duration, and I sell more than if they were just languishing in my stores.

You just have to do the math, it's not that difficult. Even with 10,000 listings, the Premium Store option is the least expensive, but only slightly less than an Anchor Store. Looks like a seller has to be at the 12,000 listings or more level to make that work. I will consider an Anchor Store, but only if listings exposure is really better.

Over the past decade, in spite of all the unpopular eBay changes, we've found a way to actually make eBay fees a smaller percentage of our sales than they were in 2000.

It does seem that smaller sellers will be screwed by these changes if they want a store, so for those selling 250 items or less per month, regular auctions will probably be the way to go, getting back to what made eBay so great in the first place.

I never worry about listing fees - you have to list if you want to sell. And I never put anything up for 99 cents just to get a free listing, unless I'm certain it's a hot item that will get a lot of bids. A lot of good stuff gets given away on eBay because sellers don't want to pay a higher listing fee.

Anyway, I'm not happy about the changes, but I'm going to do everything I can to make it work. The more sellers who get angry and leave eBay, the better for all the sellers who adapt and stay.

by: So happy! :D

Sorry kids..... but.....

I'm soooooooooooooooooooooooooooo happy that I dumped ebay over 2 years ago!



@RBH (aka richard of eBetray inkblog) are you soooo hurtin' you have to come to David and Ina's site to shill your blog on ebay? You're as bad as griff.

by: Craig Clark

I have a store with about 2,000 items in it. I sell collectibles and antiques, so my items are in my store until they sell. I usually sell about 6-7% of the inventory from my store each month. Last fall when they tested the store items in full search I saw abut a 30% increase in my sales from my store. In my opinion the length of time they tested it was not enough to determine a trend, but 30% is what I used for the anlaysis. So here is the analysis.

Considering a 30% increase, I will save about $200 per year in my listing fees for my store because my items will stay in the store for a shorter period of time and thus I will have fewer months with an insertion fee. Plus, if my store sales increase 30%, my store sales income will be up over $7,000 for a total gain of about $7,200. To be conservative, if I only have a 7.5% increase in store sales I will still be ahead about $1,800.

The auction picture is not as good. I will spend about $250 per year more on insertion fees on auction.

So looking at the total, even at a worst case scenario of a 7.5% increase I am still about $1,500 ahead with the new fee and search structure.

by: RBH

@dcsbodyjewelry

Just to clarify, eBay is not doing away with short-term fixed price durations.

All Fixed Price listing durations - 3,5,7,10,30-day and Good 'Til Cancelled- will be available with standard fees and with eBay Stores subscription packages.

Cheers,
RBH

by: Patricia

Seems to me they're hurting and finally realize they need to do something to keep sellers listing.  It might not be everyone's cup of tea but its a start.  Now....if we could only get the blockheads to realize that small sellers with good reputations count too!  Expand that TRS program fools....or get rid of it!  Sellers like me totally resent being called untrustworthy especially when we work hard to keep our good reputations!!!  I have never seen a company discriminate between its own revenue making employees - well, that's what the silly TRS program amounts to....a bunch of jerks in plain english!