I'm in the details for some sellers:
Photo courtesy of http://www.rottentoons.com
The Devil is in the details with new eBay fees. They may be beneficial to some, and not for others.
On Wednesday I reported on the new eBay fee structure that was just announced. In the article, I stated that I thought the fee changes would likely bring a lot of fresh product to the eBay auction market-place. I felt the free listing fee would send a signal that eBay was ready to up it's auction game a bit. But not being the number cruncher that many are, and knowing these things can be complicated, I held off a bit in order to see, "how it all may work out."
Unfortunately the way it will work out for many eBay auction sellers, is about a 200% increase in for FVF in the $25-$550 range. Here's why:
The old eBay final value auction fee chart shows:
The final value fee for items from .01 to $25.00 was 8.75%, over $25.00 is 3.5%. The final value fee for a $100 item according to the old fee structure is: $6.44
Fees beginning on March 30,2010
The new fee structure for auction item final value fees is 9% accross the board, with a $50 cap, so the final value fee for a $100.00 item is $9.00. That's about a 50% increase in fees. Ebay may argue that there is a $50 cap so if your item reaches $550 or more, you pay no more than $50. But how many people sell items over $550?
At the other end of the scale, if your item sells for under $25.00 you pay a flat rate of 9% which is an increase of only .25% but how many people sell in that range?
The fact is, that for a large amount of eBay auction sellers, most perhaps, for the meat of your item's value, (between $25 and $500) you'll be paying almost 200% more in FVF.
If in fact this structure stays, I don't think it will encourage those with quality items to sell via auction on eBay, to the contrary.
What I'm up to:
Things move fast in the auction world, those in the know make more $. Stay informed w/ my newsletter. No spam. I promise. Sign up below for Auctionwally's Sunday News.
Newsletter sign up, win collectibles, no spam
Disclosure Statement: As an online columnist who is also licensed auctioneer, appraiser, antiques broker, events speaker and promotor, you can assume that I get conpensated for anything I publish.
Comments
what's up with the red head
Meh!
Just one more "ebay mind game".
(video on youtube)
enough brain scrambling already sheesh!
Worst part is everything is still broken the site sucks like never before.
Thanks for doing the math, next time research it, eh?
Win some, lose some. I think there are some good changes in this new system. As we have seen with eBay over the last few years, adapt or die. This won't work for some sellers, they will leave, and I wish them well.
Suzanne Wells
The eBay Coach
You forgot the part about how the people paying a $15.95 monthly store fee would now have to pay a $299.00 subscription fee to get the same listing deals (and without the store organizational structure). Look for LOTS of stores to disappear.
You forgot the part where subscription buyers will get NO free listings - that's only for people without subscriptions.
For me, as a Power Seller, this means a HUGE increase in fees. Unless I buy a subscription which will cost at least 2.5 times what I am paying now, my 1300 items will be costed at $0.50/each instead of $0.03, which is what I pay now. Plus, higher final value fees, USPS rate increase coming soon & look for Paypal to also announce an increase in its flat + percentage fees for taking money (required for selling on site).
I already sell on Amazon, looking to shift the rest of my inventory there soon.
Hey Amazon, get ready for a plethora of x-ebay sellers, who are also buyers, BTW!!
You will have even a better year in 2010, than you did in 2009 (and you had a FANTASTIC 2009, thanks too that dumbass Donuthole!) Oh how I bet he wishes he were you right now!! heehee
Jeff Bezo's for President! Woot!
@Jake, if you'll read my first article on this subject, you'll see I said "only time will tell" I consider further revised reporting on the fees would suffice as research. Perhaps there is even more in the fees undiscovered, for example I haven't worked out all the fee schedules for fixed, price, but then I don't sell much on eBay or anywhere else via fixed price.
@Susan, that's true enough, you have to take what works for YOU and put that on steroids. If it's eBay, then have at it. For me it's a hybrid of eBay and other venues.
@Debbie, nope didn't forget those parts, chose not to cover them, very few will have the full story on this fee structure change, I doubt even eBay has the full story at this point.
@Mark and Kathy: Amazon is a great place to sell, I really like it a lot. You do realize however, that if it's fees only you're considering, Amazon are generally right in line with what eBay is charging, and Amazon has no auction venue. I do like Amazon's customer support.
Hey Amazon, get ready for a plethora of x-ebay sellers, who are also buyers, BTW!!
You will have even a better year in 2010, than you did in 2009 (and you had a FANTASTIC 2009, thanks too that dumbass Donuthole!) Oh how I bet he wishes he were you right now!! heehee
Jeff Bezo's for President! Woot!
Hey Amazon, get ready for a plethora of x-ebay sellers, who are also buyers, BTW!!
You will have even a better year in 2010, than you did in 2009 (and you had a FANTASTIC 2009, thanks too that dumbass Donuthole!) Oh how I bet he wishes he were you right now!! heehee
Jeff Bezo's for President! Woot!
@ Auctionwally: We do realize it's no auctions at Amazon and that is perfectly fine with us. At least they don't lie the way ebay does to their sellers and also to the media and their stockholders. Amazon treats everyone with respect, which is the reason they are soaring high!
Amazon also has the traffic, that ebay NO LONGER has.
We plan to use Amazon as our primary store, ecrater and bonanzle will follow even though they don't have much traffic yet... but will soon, and we will use ebid as well.
It's already being posted on social networks and blogs all over the USA, what ebay has done, word of mouth have travel!
It will all work out, all the sites already realize the flood gates are about to open, as of March 30th!!
And if Google ever starts Google auctions (which I've heard is in the process), that will be the final knife in ebay's ever growing lies and greed!
This how much it cost to sell on Bonanzle.com.
To have a store is Free !
First of all, any cash-based transaction is and will continue to be free on Bonanzle. For transactions on Bonanzle that are closed through other forms of payment, such as Paypal, Money Order, and Google Checkout, here is our pricing, which, if you're signed up and reading this, we guarantee will not increase for you through 2010.
Price to post items for sale (including up to four pictures): FREE.
All prices below are based on the Final Offer Value (FOV). This is the price of your accepted offer, plus any shipping for the offer that exceeds $10. See examples below if you have questions.
Final Offer Value 1 Fee
Less than $10 $0.50 ($0 if registered during beta)
Less than $50 $1
Less than $100 $3
Less than $1000 $5
$1000 or more $10
1 Whether a buyer wants to buy one or more of your items, they are sold as part of an offer, so our fees are per offer that you accept. Thus, you only pay when you sell i
@Mark and Kathy's last comment: I've sold many books on Amazon. I agree Amazon has a wonderful support system, I would like to ask you: How are you finding the process of selling other non-book items on Amazon? I know you have to get pre-approved to be able to sell in certain categories. Have you done this yet, and how difficult is it?
Thanks for your input.
@RocknRandy: I've sold on Bonanzle, and had the owners of the site on the AuctionWally Show. I even pioneered live auctions there. I really like Bonanzle. One of the problems they have though, is there is not a high enough volume of lookers to bring a high sell-through rate. That may have changed since the last time I was active there though. Your thoughts?
It would be appreciated if anyone reading would digg,Stumble or bookmark this site to keep the conversation going.
I will leave all comments posted regardless of which side of the issue they fall, as long as they are not vulgar.
Wally...
All of the eBay cheerleaders, not to mention any names, have their heads, as usual, stuffed up their heinne when they believe the line of crap that eBay CEO John Dohahoe and group recently delivered to the public and the eBay community, in their 2010 1st Bucket of changes on January 26th, specifically, concerning the Listing and Final Value Fee changes effective March 30th on the eBay platform....
As has been the history of this current, arrogant group of eBay executives, it's NOT what they say that you need to pay attention to, but, you need to understand they spend an extroidinary amount of time figuring out how to make significant Price Increases SOUND like cost savings to the eBay Sellers - FRAUD......
If ever there was a clear example of consumer and stockholder fraud perpetrated by a US Corporation, eBay should be at the top of the list....
To be continued..
The California Attorney General should immediately file Fraud Charges against eBay, with Class Action Status.
All of ebay price changes in the past several years has been manipulated in the same way....They make significant price increase SOUND like cost Savings to the Sellers.....
The legal definition of Fraud is as follows:....Fraud is generally defined in the law as an intentional misrepresentation of material existing fact made by one person to another with knowledge of its falsity and for the purpose of inducing the other person to act, and upon which the other person relies with resulting injury or damage. Fraud may also be made by an omission or purposeful failure to state material facts, which nondisclosure makes other statements misleading.
Omission to state material fact is very significant.....In eBay's announcements they don't mention the significant increases and they even provide a calculator to guide people away from really analyzing the figures..
Continued..
eBay is doing EVERYTHING it can to deceive it's Sellers and Stockholders.....It is very simple to know when John Donahoe is lying...just check to see if his lips are moving !!
eBay just happened to forget to tell the Sellers that the FVF is now 8.75% of the initial $50.00, plus 4.0% of the remaining closing value balance ($50.01–$1,000.00)+ 2% over $1000!! ....Previously 8.75% of the initial $25.00 ($2.19), plus 3.50% of the remaining closing value balance($25.01 - $1,000.0, and _1% over $1000)
Do you see any lowest eBay prices every in the last paragraph..
John Donahoe is intentionally defrauding the eBay community and we should NOT let him get away with it
Why does nobody see a problem with eBay forcing it's Sellers to accept an increase Fixed Cost of $49.99 for their store instead of $15.99, in order to qualify for somewhat reletive listing costs...??
eBay didn't give anything to the Sellers that list a $.99 auction. When they made Auctions starting at less than $1.00 Free, the main one that benefits is eBay. I will admit there are SOME exceptions, but few!...eBay is the one that benefits over-all or they wouldn't have set this policy. eBay executives are good enough con artists to understand this principal.
Did eBay management address the fact that some sellers, listing hundreds of thousands of listings will have to pay NO listing fees..??
My understanding on Fair Trade Law is that a company has to have a published price list, and irregardless of the customer, whatever quantity level price you qualify for is the price you qualify for...By hiding the special pricing tiers for Diamonds, eBay is violating these Fair Trade Laws
I may clean house with the 99 cent start, no insertion fee, deal. Otherwise, I'll continue to stay away from selling on eBay. I do OK on Amazon, Alibris, and Biblio for my books, and my better half sold out on ecrater the home furnishing items that stagnated on eBay. He also said eBay had managed to recruit the nastiest customers in the world, including crooks, and the ecrater buyers asked for more (he sold out) and were delighted with the high quality and low price.
@Rick thanks for your comments, I can see this is an important issue to you by the amount of time you've put into them.
I think eBay would fare better with these announcements if they were more truthful in how they result in increases for many people. Saying that this is a price cut, is like saying an Oreo cookie is white...some of it is.
@Joyful I understand your frustration, and it certainly seems eBay has given it's buyers more weight to push sellers around, but overall I've had a very good experience with buyers on eBay, so I can't attest to the statement that there are a lot of crooked buyers there.
Thanks for the taking the time to comment.
@Suzanne Wells,
"Adapt or Die". I wonder how Ebay marketplaces has been able to adapt without half its site traffic from 2 years ago. You can't tell your CUSTOMERS 'adapt or die'. If I went to Walmart or McDonald's and they told me to adapt or die, I'd go to Burger King. If there was no Burger King, I might go to Taco Bell, which is the equivalent of what I've done with Ebay- I spend the 20-40 hrs/week formerly spent listing on Ebay studying the stock market, and have made twice the money trading stocks with less than half the risk of doing business on the tilted playing field Ebay offers. Ebay used to get $300-500/monthly in fees from me. They may have gotten $300 for the entire year last year. I didn't adapt and didn't die, but the $4k a year I used to send Ebay went elsewhere. Ebay's all that is dying without sellers like me who were also buyers, btw.
Looks to me like they are forcing store sellers to upgrade their stores or be charged 3x's more for store listings (now, fixed price listings). That just makes a more guaranteed income for EBAY, and a fixed expense for sellers! So now, if I have a bad month or go on vacation for a week (as most of my income is from auctions) I will still have to pay the higher store fee! Now it will cost me approx $50 more a month, to make the same amount (not counting the increase in FVF, since most items I sell are in the $10 - 20 range), if I don't upgrade and pay the extra $50 per month, I will either have to close all my store items or spend an extra $100 per month!!!!! Well, I guess my handling charges are going to have to increase again!
Suzanne Wells, I hope you are not really an EBay Coach, since you are NOT a very optimistic or motivating Coach! Your comments were HORRENDOUS! Win some, lose some... adapt or die. This won't work for some sellers, they will leave, and I wish them well" What do you mean? You are glad to see the sellers who gave Ebay it's start, the small home sellers, GO? It looks like ebay is only rooting for the BIG sellers with huge warehouses or drop shippers, those with thousands of listings. Those who can absorb an extra $50 in expenses a month. If sales were going up to match, then fine, but I make the same as I did last year! What a HORRIBLE attitude!
After selling full-time for more than 10 years and teaching eBay-Selling at colleges around the country, I've been having my roughest season yet. Further increased fees will force me to look elswhere. I don't know what I'm going to tell my classes this Spring. I've already been warning them about Donhoe's tricky ways. I call the Meg Whitman days, the Golden Age of eBay. Alas it is over.
@Auction Einstein I agree, the Meg Whitman days do seem like the golden era of eBay.
That said, when a lot of people leave a venue, it does mean to a certain extent that those left should get a larger slice of the market. You may want to tell that to your students.
However, I like many, wish they would go back to the "old ways" in many respects.
Best,
AW
Less sellers means more sales for the ones who remain, the ones who can stick it out. That's all.
Got something to say?
Examiner.com is looking for writers, photographers, and videographers to join the fastest growing group of local insiders. If you are interested in growing your online rep apply to be an Examiner today!