Free P&P FVF discount promotion extended
June 27, 2009
eBay UK have been running a promotion since last April offering 20% off FVFs to sellers in some categories who offer free postage on their items. This promotion was due to end this month, but has now been extended until 30th September. The promo is valid for the Clothes, Shoes & Accessories, Video games, Technology and DVD categories, and there are some other conditions, so do check before you list.
Free listing on 25th June for private sellers
June 23, 2009
eBay UK are holding a free listing day for private sellers on the 25th June. Any items listed as auctions will have insertion fees waived (although all other listing enhancement and final value fees will still apply). The promotion applies regardless of start price.
The promotion specifically excludes both Business registered sellers and PowerSellers. There are a few excluded categories to check the details before you list.
eBay UK and IE hold half-price Motors’ listing weekend
June 4, 2009
eBays UK and Ireland Motors are holding a half-price listing weekend for the 6th and 7th June. Insertion fees for auction and BIN listings will be half the normal rate, so £4 or €4.50. Classified ads do not qualify for the promotion. All other fees apply as normal, and there is some other small print, so do read it before you list.
eBay.com 5c insertion fees for using Product Details
June 1, 2009
Golf clubs and cameras and cell phones – oh my! eBay.com are offering 5c insertion fees for a range of items in specified categories when listed with pre-filled item information. The offer runs from 2nd to 15th June, and is valid for fixed price (”buy it now”) listings by sellers with 4.5 or more across all four DSRs. Other fees apply as normal. Check out the full list of categories included; they’re ones where pre-filled item information (aka product details) is perhaps less likely to be used by sellers.
eBay Motors US holds cheap auction listing week
May 29, 2009
eBay Motors US will cap insertion fees at 35c for auction-style listings in its Parts and Accessories categories from 1st to 8th June. This will be a reduction in fees for any item starting at $10 or more. All other fees apply as normal. Vehicle listings and fixed price “buy it now” listings are not included. As always, read the small print before you list.
TameBay Morsels for 29th May 2009
May 29, 2009
Proof that you can still bag a bargain on eBay: the man who bought a Gainsborough on eBay for less than $200.
eBay Australia have found that 8 in 10 people are shopping on the sly, hiding the value of their shopping from their family and friends during the recession.
A couple for website owners: is Verified by Visa a conversion killer? And some interesting thoughts about getting buyers to actually buy.
Republican presidential nominee John McCain is backing Meg Whitman’s bid to become Governor of California: it’ll be interesting to see whether he, like eBay, is an asset or a liability for her campaign.
And what if you let your computer shop on eBay by itself?
Who needs bubble wrap…
May 23, 2009
It’s a tempation familiar to many eBay sellers: your buyer just doesn’t want to pay postage and packing, and for a fleeting moment, you want to slap a stamp on the item itself, and stick it in the post box. Now one Swedish artist (who, as far as I know, doesn’t sell on eBay) has tried just that. Eric Ericson has been testing the limits of European postal services by sending a variety of objects just as they are, with no packaging, to an address in Berlin.
He told Wired magazine that he “wanted to see what was possible to send, and what would arrive”. The most difficult item was a mannequin, sent in separate parts, while “food is easy; you just put it in a mailbox.” Eric has published a book, To Mr Cheng, showing the items he sent.
eBay.fr extends BIN discount again
May 14, 2009
eBay France have extended their discount on fixed price listings for another three months. Insertion fees for BIN listings will remain at 15c regardless of the start price of the item, discounted from 50c. While other sellers on eBay.fr will no doubt be as delighted as I am that eBay have extended this promotion, this kind of uncertainty over fees is really no good for business. eBay UK and eBay.com have both acknowledged that they need to be better people to do business with, and have promised to limit major changes to just twice a year. eBay France need to follow suit: put an end to these two and three month extensions to a “promotional” price change, and make 15c permanent.
eBay.com wants to compete with Amazon
May 8, 2009
At ChannelAdvisor Catalyst last month a live panel of online consumers were asked what they bought on Amazon and without exception it was Books, Movies and DVDs. They were blissfully unaware that Amazon also offer consumer electronics and household goods.
Now eBay.com has launched a promotional insertion fee of just 5¢ for books, music, movies, and video games, to run until the end of 2009. To qualify the listing needs to be in a fixed Fixed Price using product details.
The announcement says eBay are “pulling out all the stops to make eBay a top shopping destination for books, music, movies and DVDs, and video games”. That says just one thing to me, they want to take some of Amazon’s market share.
Disclosure: ChannelAdvisor advertise with TameBay.
eBay’s email changes cause confusion for sellers
May 4, 2009
It seems eBay have made some changes to their sold item emails in the last few days, which may cause some confusion to sellers. TameBay reader Kate from Cat’s Eye Designs forwarded me an example from one of her own sales:
Sale price: £2.99
Quantity: 6
Quantity sold: 3
Quantity remaining: 3
Buyer: XXXXXXX
Kate points out that the quantity sold to the buyer in question was 2, and that 3 is in fact the total quantity sold from this listing. On another transaction, where the buyer had bought a single item, the email read:
Sale price: £3.50
Quantity: 11
Quantity sold: 9
Quantity remaining: 2
Again, the email reflects the total quantity sold from the listing, not the number purchased on this individual sale.
It probably bears saying again; if you’re relying on any single set of emails for sales information, you’re going to run into problems sooner or later. Better at least to reconcile eBay with PayPal, and to be getting your information from the site, not relying on mail.
And if anyone from eBay is reading this, could we have the “send invoice” button back please? I notice there’s a yellow button to go to My eBay, so I assume this hasn’t been removed in an anti-phishing move to get people to stop clicking things in emails. So it seems like yet another case of the people who design things at eBay have never used the site. It wasn’t broken, it didn’t need fixing, please, let’s have it back.
15c Auctions on eBay.com, .ca 21st April 2009
April 21, 2009
eBay.com and .ca are offering 15c insertion fees on auctions for today, 21st April, only. To be eligible, sellers must either have 4.5 or higher on all four 12 month DSRs, or be newbies with no 12 month DSR score.
eBay Motors Parts and Accessories are included in the sale, but there are a bunch of category exclusions, most notably media listings (including Books, Music, Movies & DVDs and Video Games). Fixed price listings are not included.
eBay Oz offers 20c auction listings throughout April
April 7, 2009
eBay Australia are offering 20c insertion fees on auctions from 7th to 30th April. All sellers with an Australian registered address are eligible, and all other fees apply as normal. As always, please read the small print before you list.
[Updated] eBay UK & Germany reduce FVFs for free shipping
April 6, 2009
Another push for free shipping today from eBays UK and Germany: until 30th June, there’s a 20% reduction in FVFs for items offering free shipping in clothing, DVDs and some technology categories. The offer applies to all listing formats except classifieds, but sellers will need to have an eBay Shop to qualify, and to be eBay.de registered to get the discounts on that site.
As usual there’s some small print, so please do read it for the relevant site before you list.
eBay US sellers get UK visibility for Less
March 19, 2009
eBay.com have announced a pricing promotion for sellers based in the US discounting the fee paid for international visibility. The announcement says, “the International Site Visibility listing upgrade gives your items greater exposure on the UK site for a small fee. It’s a terrific opportunity to grow your potential buyer base by as much as one-third!” Usually priced up to 40c, the announcement states that the fees will be reduced to 1c between 17th and 27th of March.
Whilst the American dollar has lost some of its value recently, it is trading more strongly against sterling than it has been for some time. This, combined with the relative cheapness of US goods in any case, may well prove to be attractive to buyers. That said, higher postage costs, combined with possible import duties, are likely to offset many savings.
Also, as an eBay UK based seller pointed out to me: US sellers may well appear at the top of Best Match search results because of good DSRs when they don’t have a track record of shipping to the UK.
American sellers are getting a slice of the UK market. Last week, a PR campaign aimed at attracting UK consumer sellers to eBay coincided with eBay’s removal of low end fees for auctions started by consumer sellers.
In the hardest economic climate for many years, can we expect an ‘incentive’ for British eBay business sellers, I wonder?
Gordon Brown: we can learn from eBay’s Feedback system
March 9, 2009
Britain’s Prime Minister, Gordon Brown, will (according to The Times) cite eBay as an inspiration for a public service reform White Paper released later today. Among proposals designed to offer greater transparency for parents, pupils and patients, Gordon Brown will say that: “people will take it for granted that they will access other people’s reviews and ratings before buying something on eBay and yet we do not have systematic access to other people’s experiences when choosing a GP practice or nursery.”
Have you stopped sneering yet? I do hope so. Because it’s a fascinating point. We all know that eBay’s feedback system has its flaws but a meaningful and clever use of user reviews may be just the shot in the arm that this country’s public services really need.
21 day free listing for eBay Australia
March 1, 2009
Starting from Monday eBay Australia are having a free listing day for auctions with 99c starts that’ll last for three weeks.
Any items listed or scheduled to start between the 2nd and 22nd March with a 99c start will have no insertion fee charged (normally 30c). All listing enhancements and FVF will be charged as normal.
This promotion mirrors the free listings for private sellers from 12th March in the UK. Having drastically reduced the upfront fees for fixed price listings last year eBay are slowly moving towards a free listing model. The quicker they get there the better 
eBay.com Motors 50c listing days 24th & 25th February
February 24, 2009
eBay.com Motors are holding cheap listing days on Tuesday, February 24th and Wednesday, February 25th*. Insertion fees for auctions in the parts and accessories categories are capped at 50c. All other fees are charged as normal, and there is a list of exclusions, most notably vehicle listings and BIN listings, so do read the small print before you list.
* (Their headline says January 25th at the moment, but that’s obviously a mistake; the correct details are given in the body of the AB post.)
eBay and Amazon directors to speak at Catalyst UK
February 19, 2009
“Hitting high growth on the world’s online marketplace” will be the topic for Mark Lewis, eBay UK MD, when he speaks at ChannelAdvisor Catalyst next month. Unsurprisingly the eBay session where Mark spoke last year was one of the most well attended sessions, and one at which he announced free gallery and the move towards lower cost insertion fees. I’d expect it to be equally well attended this year, eBay haven’t made any platform or pricing changes so far in 2009 but if there are any in the pipeline I’d expect to Mark give a preview.
Amazon Director, Matt Henderson will be hosting another Catalyst session. Amazon is the de facto 2nd choice marketplace for sellers looking to expand off eBay, and although they don’t report GMV generated by sellers, analysts estimate that 2008 third-party seller GMV was between $5 and $9 billion. Amazon overall grew 21% faster than e-commerce last year so this is definitely a site worth utilising.
There’s also a session from Silverpop about email marketing, this looks interesting one as I used to hate the medium – but love it now. It’s a great recession proof tool and the trick is of course to send emails to people that actually want to receive them, and of course to have content that grabs their attention.
Catalyst is always a good opportunity to catch up with friends and colleagues (and even competitors 
), plus the content is invariably superb. The dates are 30-31st March, the venue is The Brewery, London, the topic is “Don’t just survive. Thrive”. It’s looking set to be a great conference.
1st 3 listings free for new eBay.com sellers
February 13, 2009
From 14th – 23st February first time sellers on eBay.com can list three items using the auction format for free. As well as free insertion fees sellers can also add the Gallery Plus listing enhancement to their 3 free listings at no cost.
Time to dust off that buying ID and list a few personal items for free if you’re an eBay.com user. Plus this year if you get a Valentines gift that’s really not suitable, at least you can unload it for free
Removing subtitles from GTC listings
February 6, 2009
If you’ve not already done it already, this is the weekend to delete subtitles from the Decemeber promotion off your Good Til Canceled listings (GTC).
eBay have now enabled editing listings to add or remove features from GTC listings, including subtitles. Up until now once a listing had a sale it wasn’t possible to edit it with canceling and relaunching. The ability to add and remove features has been live since 3rd February and for most features the SYI form, TurboLister and eBay’s Bulk Editing tools can be used.
The exception for editing is Subtitle, which can only be removed using the SYI form. If you need to remove subtitles from GTC listings, still live from the promotion for which you don’t want to be charged, then sadly your only option is to use the clunky SYI form to do them one at a time.
25% off FVF for UK DVD sellers
January 23, 2009
From 27th January all DVD listings must offer at least one domestic postage service with free P&P. As promised in December, eBay are running a promotion giving 25% off final value fees to sellers who offer free post on DVD auctions or multiple quantity fixed price listings. The promotion runs from 27th January until 31st March 2009.
In order to qualify for the FVF discount the following conditions must be met for the listing to be classed as offering “Free Post”:
- Domestic postage needs to be set to “Flat: Same cost to all buyers”
- The first domestic postage service needs to be specified and ‘0′ needs to be entered into the £ cost field or the “Free P&P” tick box needs to be ticked.
- Insurance must either not be required or have its cost set to zero
- Postage service should not be “Local Delivery/Pick Up” or “Other”
- There cannot be any surcharges
- If the listing is a multiple item listing, the postage cost for additional items must also be zero
There are a few exclusions, the most notable of which are Dutch Auctions (multiple item auction style listings).
Whilst the discount will be welcomed by DVD sellers many will be about to start the process of editing listings to offer free post. Prices will probably rise in the category to compensate so the reduction in fees should make the change revenue neutral to eBay. The big question is will the discount become permanent at some point in the future?
Free subtitles to run until Feb 09 on GTC listings
January 7, 2009
It’s not unheard of for eBay to make a mistake, but they’ve really gone to town on the subtitle promotion for which sellers who participated are benefiting.
Having initially disallowed Good Til Canceled (GTC) items from the free Subtitle promotion, which ran for the whole of December, eBay allowed users to include free subtitles on GTC listings. They then announced they’d refund any Subtitle fees incurred up until 15th January at which point sellers would be able to remove subtitles from GTC listings (even if they had sales) so that they wouldn’t be charged for Subtitle on subsequent relists.
Today eBay have announced that they’ve been unable to update the site to enable users to remove Subtitles from GTC listings and this will now be enabled by 3rd February. Consequently the fees for Subtitles on GTC listings will be refunded for all qualifying GTCs on relist for the period 1st January – 9th February 2009.
So what started as a promotion for December will no effectively benefit sellers for up to three months. Any GTC listings launched with Subtitle between 1st and 11th December will get two renewals with Subtitle and a full 90 days benefit. All sellers need remember to do is to remove the Subtitle prior to the listing renewing after 9th February.
50% off 1 & 3 day auctions on eBay.com
January 3, 2009
eBay.com are reducing insertion fees for 1 or 3 day duration auctions by 50% for January (between the 3rd and 31st). The discount applies regardless of start price and is also carried over to eBay Canada
There are a few restrictions, sellers must have DSRs of 4.5 and above (or be new sellers yet to gain DSR ratings) and some categories (including Media, Motors, Real Estate and Business and Industrial categories) are excluded.
There have been many incentives to list long duration fixed price multiple quantity listings on eBay recently, so it’s interesting to see a promotion aimed at the exact opposite behaviour.
This promotion is likely to fill the site with items ending soonest (which will climb to the top of search results), doubtless many of which will be listed at prices close to the desired final sale price.
Auctions are a selling tactic well worth pursuing, if you sell on eBay.com and routinely list fixed price items only I’d recommend trying some auctions.
Private sellers get 5p listing weekend on eBay UK
December 26, 2008
Private sellers can list auctions for just 5p this weekend on eBay UK. On Saturday 27th and Sunday 28th December, auctions’ insertion fees are reduced to 5p. All other fees are charged as normal. Buy It Now items are not included, though sellers can add a buy it now price to their auctions for the normal upgrade fee. Some categories are also excluded, so do read the small print before you list.
PowerSellers and Business Sellers are not eligible for the promotion – so time to list your Christmas presents on your buying ID. And I can’t resist saying that this is *exactly* as predicted by Psychic Psue on the the PowerSeller Board last week
eBay India offers half-price listing upgrades 23rd-26th December
December 23, 2008
From 23rd to 26th December inclusive, eBay India are running a listing upgrades promotion. Sellers listing on eBay.in who have not used listing upgrades in the previous two months, may do so for half the normal rate. Most listing upgrades – from Home Page Featured to Scheduled – are included, and the promotion is valid for both auction and BIN listings (though not for shop inventory).
Sellers on other sites might expect to see similar promotions coming their way in the next few weeks, I suspect.
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