Ebay's Spring Seller Update....it's Never Good Really Good.

Hey All,
Anyone who deals with ebay should have received an email from ebay about their new Spring updates. There's lots of "carrots" waving around, but what it really amounts to is another fee increase. The FVF will be raised from 9% to a 10% flat rate - unless you open an ebay store so you can hang onto that 9%.

ebay flaunts up to 2,500 free listings per month - but you have to have an upper level ebay store subscription to get that. You'll still get the 50 free per month if you don't have a store - no real change there.

But the devil is in the details: the listing fees on items below $1 will be raised from 10 cents to 30 cents (200% increase!)....unless you have an ebay store which can lower that at different levels of store subscriptions.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinforma...verview.html

Basically, this kills the 99 cent auctions as well as most other lower priced auctions. Starting prices will rise or some things will just not be offered anymore by many sellers. ebay is pushing the store subscriptions hard, but for the occasional, seasonal and small sellers this simply hurts. I really feel that ebay will want to eventually do away with auctions altogether. I just hope they will still have the free listing days, but with the upcoming higher rates I'm doubtful.

http://pages.ebay.com/sellerinforma...ication.html

Simple doesn't mean better.

I sold stuff during the early days of ebay and I was very pleased with the process. I sold computer stuff, camera stuff, odds/ends, and even a few stamps. It was like a friendly community and the "rules" were fairly simple.

Now I have a few items I'd like to list, but the rules (and fees) have expanded to the point that I'm too intimidated to sell. It's not the fees I mind so much as all the stuff I read here about shipping, tracking, etc.

Kirk

The only time I tried to sell on ebay it was a WW2 stamp, the first polish stamp issued after liberation in 1944. My auction was refused because of some restrictions like it was a Nazi stamp I couldn't sell in Canada. I never tried to have another auction with ebay. My only auction experience as a seller is SCF. It's usually not the place for a great return but it's no fees and no troubles to get paid, I often get paid after I visit the post office. Also i'm not shipping to a complete stranger, we are a community. So ebay can raise the fees, I will never auction with them anyway but i'm concern as a buyer this will reflect on the prices

I started with ebay 15 years ago. I sold thousands of items. I was one of the power sellers in the first year that they had that designation. I quit selling on ebay when they forced Paypal down our throats. I am first of all, a stamp collector. I still like to receive mail. Many of my buyers went as far as to get hand cancels for me on their payments that they mailed to me. That was very much appreciated. After a while I tried selling on ebay again, following their Paypal rules, but that time I started with a different ID. It was not as much fun and after a few months I gave up selling on ebay again.
It has been years since I sold on ebay now. I still sell in live auctions. I also dabble at Stampwants and Delcampe a little bit. I need to get back to selling more and ebay was a great venue for that, but ebay keeps taking the fun out of it for me and it gets too much like a business and less like a hobby.

I started selling 6 or so years ago, off and on, when it cost 15c a listing for 99c and under start price and then 25c the next increment up to $9.99 start price.

And I sold.


The up and coming listing fee of 30c for any start price is a bit steep, for the poor 99c start price idea that ebay touted for a year or more as a great way to attract buyers, but seems to only reflect a change to slightly higher start pricing, not any reflection on pushing stores at all.

The 10% final vale fee of ending sale price and shipping is steeper than the way older '5% and no charge on shipping', but that's inflation, and people mis-using the shipping price for their own gain.

The pushing the stores idea comes from, I think, now, a decrease in store costing to $15.95 a month when a years store cost is paid at one time. With 150 free listings included, this seems to harken back to the way older $14.95 basic store cost.


I still want to sell, life goes on, and I go where the people are, which seems to be mostly ebay.

BidStart and Delcampe and Wensy and Stamps2Go and Etsy and eCrater and others all have their following and place. I buy from most of them but, so far, have only sold on ebay.

Because I want to sell.

It a fee increase for sellers without a store, for sure. But, without a store you still get 50 free listings. That won't kill 99 cent auctions. If it reduces the amount of trash offered on ebay, which is substantial in my opinion, then there is a silver lining.

i guess they will keep on squeezing..if we want to sell the exposure is on ebay...i remember when if you looked at collections and lots at ebay thats exactly what was offered...now you have clowns asking 4 dollars for a damaged 5 cent stamp..its pretty bad !

As I have said many times before we were forced out of our ebay store .com as aliens.

So we had to changed to ebay store .com.au . By doing this, things had to change as the cheapest auction listing was 50c. So we started listing as "By It Now" at a cost of 20c per listing. A $100 listing still cost 20c. I have not listed anything that costs more than that.

Final Value Fees are 7.9%

8 months later and we have become use to the change over and hearing about all the changes on .com it looks like it has worked out a better, changing to .com.au than we first thought.

Sales have turned very much for the better in the last 4 weeks.

I'm back from visiting relatives at the hospital for the day so I finally got a chance to read responses and everyone has a different take on it which is to be expected.

50 free listings is good for the occasional seller, but a pittance for anyone else trying to sell more. Even 150 "free" listings per month with a basic store is still not much. Of course you can pay close to $200 per month if you want "free" 2,500 listings per month with an anchor store. It's a bit cheaper if you purchase a store for a whole year instead of paying by the month.

Of course there's "trash" on ebay, buy that can be found at any price level. What is "trash or junk" doesn't have a definitive definition as everyone has a different opinion, but many will agree that there's plenty of material that's extremely overpriced. I've read many complaints about the BIN / Fixed priced items which ebay is pushing harder and harder. Low priced items have their place the same as they have them at stamp shows.

There will be a new change concerning BIN (buy it now) items too. The BIN price has to be at least 30% or more higher than the listing's start price so expect higher prices there. It's nothing I ever used and probably never will as I prefer the days when ebay was a pure auction format. I really wish ebay would spin off the collectibles section of the site.

I just really hope the free listings days will continue to happen on ebay. My last two major auctions utilized them well and saved me a lot in listing fees. I'm currently working on a 4,500+ postcard/postal history auction. If ebay doesn't give continue with the free listing days it's going to Delcampe as I'm not going to pay over $1200 in listing fees as that would be insane. I could get an anchor store and list them over two months for $400 and save 1% on FVF. It's an option. Relisting items or listing in two categories might not happen much at all.

Overall, I'm not surprised. Amazon is beating hard on their third party sellers too and ebay is making step after step to become Amazon part II. ebay has stockholders to please and expensive executives to pay. ebay stock did go up today. They'll be making more money.

Oh yea....the new final value fee will be a flat rate. It will no longer be tiered thus folks selling higher priced items will be hit as well. High priced coin sellers will be slammed hard by the new FVF structure.

If you really want to see some seller angst: http://forums.ebay.com/db2/forum/20...r/5200000027

That's the link to the special discussion form for the new updates. Folks ain't happy.