Delcampe Fee Changes Sept 1, 2012 And Jan 1, 2013

One aspect of this whole thing (eBay, Delcampe, Bidstart, etc) is that sellers follow the buyers. By that I mean they go where there are sales to be had.

If a site has the sales, if other sellers are having a good day there, then that is the place to go.

I enjoy seeing Delcampe raise it's fees for one reason. This will force sellers of all types to learn how to list an item if they do indeed wish to have buyers find it and thus have a chance of selling it among the mass of other listings.

This happened on ebay years ago. That's why there are so many books and articles about how to sell like a millionaire or something about ebay. Because it did cost to list on ebay, even to list an item under one dollar.

Now there are free days or reduced fees days and similar draws. However I don't like those days. They do clutter up the site and while some sellers do wait for these days to list a lot of their items, I don't like to rely upon the whims and vagaries of what ebay decides are good days to have these seller sales.

It only means to me that these are the days that ebay has found to have less sales, so they do the free idea to attract sellers and thus boost their own (eBay's) revenue. That's it.

If certain days are known to have less sales, for reasons like sports playoffs, school days, vacation days, etc then to me these seem to be the days to avoid trying to sell.

Some may buy on those days of course. Not everyone is distracted on the same days by the same outside influences. Depends on your market.


The other thing is how do you make a listing title search-able? Delcampe has ignored this for a long while by having a rather unsearchable search engine. I enjoy a good search engine myself. I can find what I want quickly and be off to enjoy other things.

Delcampe has improved their search engine this last year and it works rather well. I enjoy searching because I have learned to not just search in one way with one choice of words and phrase, but to search other ways, other words, other phrases. Not everyone talks the same way.

I see many, many listings on Delcampe (and few now om ebay) that just say (for example) 'Canada stamp' or 'GB #456' (which catalogue are they using?) or similar very basic type of titles.

These do not attract people who use the search to find their items. That is at least half of people using the sites who do search. That's like ignoring half of your audience who, by the way, have gone to the trouble of learning how to use search to find their items.

Raising the cost to list an item raises the expectations of how many items you Need to sell, not just wish you could sell, and thus forces the seller to learn how to attract buyers.

If I can find an item that I want and it is listed at two dollars instead of the preferred 50c then I might just buy it. I might not want to wait for a long time to find my item at a better price. My time might be more valuable to me at that moment. Not everyone has good money skills (I know I don't).

If an item is presented well, with a good sales technique (friendly to the customer) then it has a better chance of keeping the buyer there at your listing (and your other listings too if you tell them about them) instead of just clicking on.

Perhaps now we will see some books out their on how to sell and win on the best web site out there, Delcampe. Because that's where the buyers will be.

Quote from Sebastian Delcampe: "As long as you do not sell anything, you do not need to pay us anything."

This is pretty simple - you only pay the fee if something sells. It does absolutlely NOTHING to prevent listings of "junk", mass duplications, items with poor photos or descriptions that supposedly is choking the servers. It only hurts the buyers who did their job well enough to get their item sold. Those of us with high sales of inexpensive quality items will go elsewhere while the "junk" will sit on Delcampe and cause the same problems that the "fee" is suppose to cure. I'm done.