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.
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.com’s big announcement: what’s in it for sellers?
April 14, 2009
eBay.com made its first biannual announcement of 2009 today. This is part of the new strategy to limit disruption to sellers by making two big rafts of changes each year, rather than constant piecemeal adjustments to the platform. The changes are due to take place from 15th June (actual implementation time may, however, be later and in some cases isn’t yet fixed).
There is a lot of detail in the announcement, and I would encourage all sellers to read it for themselves. Here are the highlights, and no doubt more information will be forthcoming over the next few weeks:
Multiple variant listings
Sellers will be able to offer variants of products – for example, shirts in different colours and sizes – within the same listing. It will be possible to vary the price (but not the shipping) for different items in the same listing. This is as announced by Mark Lewis for eBay UK at Catalyst last month.
Multi-variant listings will be available in Mens’ and Womens’ Shoes categories from the week commencing 15th June, and for the rest of Clothing, Shoes and Accessories plus Home and Garden from mid-July. Rollout across all categories is planned, but currently has no implementation date (the rumour I hear is 2010).
Amazonification of product pages
There will be an expansion of product pages: frequently used to group identical items in Music and Electronics (e.g. all the copies of one particular CD), expect to see these in Books, Movies & DVDs, Music, Video Games, Cell Phones, and Tickets, with more categories to follow. More sellers will be chasing the highlighted “value box” at the top right
The new view item page which eBay have been testing for the past year will roll out to “most” buyers by mid-June. “Photo zoom” is coming later this summer, together with an animated countdown timer for auction listings.
Dispute resolution moves from PayPal to eBay
eBay are touting this as a “new dispute resolution process”, but in fact, it looks very much like the old PayPal dispute resolution process, only hosted on eBay instead of PayPal; eBay themselves say that they will “retain substantially the same definitions and policies that PayPal uses to resolve item not received and item not as described disputes”.
Buyers will have the current 45 days to file a non-receipt or SNAD claim with eBay. Exactly how this will differ from filing a claim with PayPal isn’t immediately apparent, except that buyers will be able to file the dispute whatever payment method they have used. Once the claim is filed, buyers “may” be given the option to contact eBay by phone (we’ve heard from some people involved in the testing process that this has been done). The case is then reviewed by an eBay Customer Service rep, who will consider transaction details, buyer and seller track record, shipping information and item location; if the buyer’s claim warrants further investigation, the CS rep will contact the seller. eBay say:
We’ll be taking a more active role, and in certain cases when we determine the seller was not at fault we may refund the buyer at our own expense.
Optimistically, it’s possible that this new process might stop serial non-receipt claimants on eBay. Sellers, though, are going to see it as the loss of yet more control over the transaction, with eBay likely to be just as trigger-happy with refunds as PayPal are.
The new resolution process applies to eBay.com only; there’s no news when or if it might roll out in other countries. The transition process from PayPal disputes to eBay disputes begins Q2 2009 (i.e. now) and the change should be complete before the holiday selling season. I have no doubt that sellers will have a raft of questions about this, so leave us a comment and I’ll do my best to get more info as required.
eBay.com retires old search system
February 20, 2009
eBay.com has announced that their old-style search format will be retired in April. The new “finding” system offers users the ability to specify a range of criteria from payment method and item location, to specifics of colour, size and item condition.
eBays say that 90% of users are now using the new format, and that “response from the Community to the new finding has been great”. A thread on the US discussion board is less enthusiastic: one member writes “the biggest single enhancement the users have asked for is to keep the OPT OUT link working because we don’t like or even want the new search”.
The announcement’s been made only for eBay.com, so it’s not quite clear how this will affect other sites: eBay UK had said the old system would be retired in March, so it’s possible we’ll see the option to opt out disappear before .com users do.
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 
Updates on price change and payments policies
February 2, 2009
Today was the day that eBay UK were supposed to roll out the change to Best Match so that sellers could increase prices but not be penalised in Best Match for doing so. This was announced in the most recent Business Seller newsletter, but unfortunately the technology is not yet working. Sellers who’ve increased prices today have seen their BM standing plummet. eBay have recommended sellers wait until at least tomorrow before changing any prices, and have said that there will be an announcement made shortly. We’ll keep you updated if we find out anything more.
There is also some clarification on how UK listings with ISV will appear on eBay.com if they offer paper payment methods which have now been banned for US eBayers. James, eBay UK’s community manager, wrote on the PowerSeller board:
As long as you are offering a safe payment method then your listings will show on the US Site. How this works is when you purchase ISV (because you need to offer PayPal as a requirement for ISV) if the listing also offers cheques/ money orders, then these payment methods will be removed & not appear as options on the US site.
We’re still waiting for clarification of what will happen to listings which offer paper payments within the body of the description. For now, if you’re paying for ISV, then avoiding mention of paper payment methods in your description is probably the safest route to take.
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.
eBay.com extend promotions on media and free shipping til March
December 18, 2008
eBay.com has announced the extension of two listing promotions until 31st March 2009.
Free shipping
- All sellers who offer free shipping will get free subtitle listing enhancement.
- PowerSellers who offer free shipping will get double FVF discounts.
- Sellers are reminded that listings with free shipping get a boost in Best Match.
Media Categories
All sellers get 5c insertion fees and free subtitle when they list using pre-filled item information.
These offers apply only on eBay.com. Other eBay sites have different fee structures.
Half-price auction listings on eBay.com, .ca 10th December
December 10, 2008
eBay.com and Canada are offering half-price insertion fees for 1, 3 and 5 day auctions for tomorrow, Wednesday 10th December. The promotion is open to sellers with 4.5 or more on all four 12-month DSR criteria, and new sellers who do not yet have DSR ratings.
Some categories (vehicles, real estate, business) are excluded, as are BIN listings and 7 and 10 day auctions. This close to Christmas, sellers taking advantage of the promotion would be well advised to pay for the BIN upgrade and let nervous buyers get on with their shopping, rather than being forced to wait for the end of an auction, however short.
50% off eBay.com auction fees for high DSR sellers
November 24, 2008
For 24th – 25th November auction listing fees are being discounted by 50% for eBay.com and eBay.ca. However in order to take advantage of the savings all 4 seller DSR ratings must be 4.5 or above. New sellers who haven’t yet received 10 DSR scores to gain a rating are also eligible.
It’s no surprise to see eBay offer a discount, to boost listings, a week before what’s normally the busiest shopping weekend in the US of the holiday season. What’s not surprising is that again the listing promotion is aimed at auctions and not at fixed price listings.
eBay.com drops duplicate listings policy
November 21, 2008
eBay.com announced yesterday that search results would no longer hide duplicate listings from the same seller, a process that’s become known as “de-duping“. Where an individual seller has more than one identical listing for sale, all instances will now show in search; previously, only one would have been displayed. eBay say that sellers are now taking advantage of the boost that recent sales give their listings, by combining identical items into single listings offering multiple items for sale, and that “this has proven to be the right strategy for sellers and a great shopping experience for buyers”.
But this doesn’t feel quite like the whole story to me. If the policy works, and sellers are changing their behaviour as desired because of it, why change the policy? The duplicate listings policy was – at least in part – intended to stop a few huge sellers dominating particular categories: might we assume that eBay are now happy to have one or two or their largest sellers dominant after all?
eBay.com will continue to show a maximum of ten listings per seller per search results page. Sellers should at least spread their listings out over time rather than listing in ‘clumps’ to try to avoid having them hidden under this policy.
eBay’s Christmas promotion pushes buyers to favoured merchants
November 14, 2008
eBays all over the world begin their Christmas marketing campaigns today. eBay UK put out an announcement this morning about theirs (though you read it here first) highlighting their message that
eBay is on average 25% cheaper than the high street on like for like new items
“eBay is cheap” was very unpopular with sellers last year; will this credit crunch Christmas be any different?
Meanwhile, over the pond, Greg Fant from the Marketing and Buyer Experience team has details of what eBay.com will be doing. “Millions of eligible customers” are to receive coupons for money-off their eBay purchases; the coupons will appear throughout the site and in buyers’ My eBay accounts. Presumably there’s some targetting going on, as the actual percentage discounts offered will vary; several UK members I know have received vouchers for 10% off in specific categories. The coupons will be valid for both auctions and BINs, “for a very limited time” to get shoppers out spending as soon as possible.
from top rated sellers
The Bid From $1 promotion, featured on eBay.com’s front page, sees a range of small electronics sold on auction starting at $1, with free shipping. Any sellers thinking of adopting that as a listing strategy in order to gain the extra promotion, however, can forget it: these are specific products from specific big sellers, eforcity and henrys.com, for example. You can see this even on the ones that are sold out: check out the URLs, all of which currently contain the “SpecificSeller” criterion.
The Daily Deal will also highlight a deep-discounted product again with free shipping; a different product, available in limited quantities, will be featured each day. So far, this promo appears to be entirely of buy.com.
Frankly, Mr Fant’s AB post is, at best, disingenuous. These promotions are not for all eBay sellers: they’re of specific, selected sellers, whose IDs are coded into the links from eBay’s home page. Presenting this to eBay sellers generally as “special deals to increase excitement, drive buzz, and keep buyers coming back to eBay for more” is missing the point entirely: what’s being driven is buyers straight from the home page to the listings of eBay’s favoured merchants.
Obama inauguration tickets banned on eBay
November 14, 2008
eBay have banned the sale of tickets to Barack Obama’s inauguration ceremony on eBay itself and on their ticket subsidiary, StubHub. The company had been under pressure from the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies after tickets which will not be issued until January, were selling for up to $7,500 last week. The tickets are issued to members of Congree, and are supposed to be free of charge.
0 results found for obama inauguration ticket
Almost a quarter of a million tickets will be issued for the ceremony, which takes place in Washington on 20th January. Senator Diane Feinstein, who chairs the inauguration committee, had said that buyers would be prepared to pay up to $40,000 per ticket; she is now preparing legislation that would make re-selling them a criminal offence.
The tickets may be gone, but inauguration merchandise, from badges and periscopes to hotel rooms, is still all over eBay.
eBay.com paperless payments policy goes live
October 27, 2008
A week later than expected, eBay.com’s paperless payments policy has finally gone live today; sellers may not offer cash, cheques or money orders as means of payment, but only one of the approved electronic methods: PayPal, credit or debit card payment to a seller’s merchant account, or ProPay. As of today, sellers will not be able to list as accepting “checks” or “money orders” through the SYI form; listings already live with checks and MOs as payment options will have those hidden on the view item page.
eBay has extended the grace period for .com sellers to amend their listings to remove references to paper payments to January 15th 2009. Sellers who have to cancel and relist Good Til Cancelled listings in order to remove references to prohibited payment methods, will have their insertion and feature fees credited to their seller account.
What’s still not clear is how this affects non-US sellers whose listings are available on eBay.com, whether using the ISV upgrade or on an international search. Both pinkie James on the UK PowerSeller Board and John McDonald, head of Trust and Safety in the US, talking to Scot Wingo, were unable to clarify the position. In Australia during the short period where PayPal was the only permitted payment method, sellers who offered other means of payment had their listings hidden from Australian buyers. Scot asked John whether sellers on .com would be permitted to offer paper payments to buyers from countries where this is still permitted: he, like thousands of sellers, is still waiting for an answer to this one. If the head of T&S doesn’t know, one has to wonder just who he’s gone to ask; as soon as we get an answer, I’ll update this post.
Updated to add the answer:
A little site experimentation finds that if you search for something you’re likely to find from German sellers and then choose one of the ones not offering PayPal, the View Item page is blocked:
This item is not available for purchase
This item is not available for purchase on eBay United States.
Learn more about our accepted payments policy.
View the original listing on eBay and buy this item on eBay Germany
More generously than we might expect, there is a link to the listing on the original site.
On items which offer PayPal plus paper payments on the original non-.com listing, when viewed on .com the paper payments are not shown.
eBay.com hides quantity available on multi-item listings
October 18, 2008
eBay.com have said they are to hide the quantity available on multiple item listings for more than ten items. Rather than saying “84 available”, the listing will now tell potential buyers “more than 10 available”. eBay say:
both research and the input we’ve received from sellers indicate that buyers tend to purchase less often when they see a large quantity of items available. This is most likely because they feel a lack of urgency to purchase, or they perceive that the item isn’t selling well.
This certainly mirrors my experience, and that of other TameBayers: buyers buy faster when they think they might miss out.
Depending on the item, of course, a quantity of ten is still too high. Right now I have a few items listed that, with a quantity of 3 or 4 available for 10 days, I get a dozen watchers and no sales; if I list them singly, I can sell a couple every day. In many categories – largely, the ones selling pretty non-essentials – multiple item listings just don’t work so well. So if this change rolls on other eBay sites, it would be very useful to have the facility to set our own maximum visible quantity for each item.
eBay search broken – buyers offered off site ads
October 17, 2008
eBay’s search has been intermittently broken at times during today and totally broken for part of this evening.
A seller contacted me this morning and their items were invisible on eBay UK. Logging into their account they could see items for sale but a search of sellers other items stated they had nothing listed for sale. Even when searching for specific individual items by title they failed to appear in search results.
Some time later the items re-appeared on the site, but they had the newly listed icon next to them – including the item shown above which is a ten day listing with just over 24 hours left to run. A nine day old listing should not be designated as newly listed with the newly listed icon.
This evening things got progressively worse. First came the messages that eBay were unable to run the search entered, although eBay’s off site adverts seemed to function perfectly. Send buyers off eBay while it’s broken and they may never return.
Then the situation deteriated further with searches returning messages simply saying “Sorry, that’s not working right now”. Title and description searches are known to be broken with an estimate of about a week to fix. This evening not even title searches were working, sellers with listings finishing this evening may not have had great success. The problem appears to have affected both the eBay UK and eBay.com sites.
With the busiest time of the year fast approaching buyers, sellers and especially eBay themselves need to have a reliable site. Searches not working is simply not acceptable for an ecommerce site the size of eBay.
Title & Description search will be broken all week
October 15, 2008
eBay have acknowledged a problem with search, where a title-and-description search is not showing up items which should be visible, though the same listings *do* show in a title-only search. The problem was first reported on seller forums both in the UK and the US earlier in the week: customer support had told several sellers that there was no known problem, but the eBay.com Announcements Board has now said:
Title and Description Search is not displaying all items correctly. Please be assured that we are working aggressively to resolve the issue, and expect it to be fixed by the end of next week. We know how frustrating this is, and sincerely apologize that the fix will take so long, but the reindexing necessary to complete the fix literally takes several days to run.
If you are a seller and your item is not displaying in a Title and Description Search, please don’t hesitate to contact Customer Support, and they will be happy to refund your fees upon validation that your item is impacted by this bug.
If you are a buyer, these items are always available by using Title-only Search (simply uncheck the Include title and description box when running a search). Additionally, if you have Favorite Searches set up, you may want to temporarily modify them to search by Title only.
I would respectfully suggest to eBay Support that they have no idea how frustrating this is; their income, after all, isn’t relying on this function working correctly. Moreover, not everyone reads the AB board – particularly buyers for whom it normally holds little of interest – so they will have no idea why their searches are suddenly not working.
There’s been no corresponding announcement for UK sellers yet, but with an official post to point to now, sellers with missing listings should probably contact customer support with details of the affected items.
Updated to add: also on eBay France.
Feedback revision rolls out for eBay UK, Ireland, .com
October 13, 2008
eBay UK have announced that feedback revision will be rolled out on 20th October. eBay Ireland and eBay.com will also launch feedback revision on the same day.
As already announced for eBay Australia, the new system will allow sellers to request that buyers edit feedback within 30 days of it being left. Buyers will only be able to revise feedback “upwards” – i.e. a positive cannot be changed to a negative or neutral – and sellers cannot request that buyers edit positive feedback. Buyers will be able to edit the rating, the DSR scores and the comment they left.
Sellers will be able to request 5 edits per 1,000 feedbacks received, though eBay have said that this limit may be reconsidered: when it was announced for the Australian site, many sellers wondered what would be the position for buyers who’d left multiple non-positive feedbacks for combined transactions, so it would be good to see this addressed in the near future.
There’s more detail on exactly how the system will work in the FAQs.
eBay UK will also launch the new Resolution Centre at the end of October: this replaces the current Dispute Console, and just the change of name alone should make trading on eBay a more pleasant experience. There’s not much detail in the announcement of exactly what will be changing, but one welcome addition should be “a separate flow for buyers and sellers to mutually agree to cancel a transaction”: seeing this process made simpler and less antagonistic should be good news for buyers *and* sellers.
eBay drop Bid Assistant
September 5, 2008
eBay.com have announced today that they are to drop the Bid Assistant tool as of 15th September. Introduced in May last year, Bid Assistant allowed buyers to specify a group of items of which they wanted to buy one: the system would then bid for them on each in turn, moving on to the next in the group if they failed to win the preceding one.
eBay’s announcement says that the feature had very little use, and sadly I think this was predictable: for buyers who are savvy enough to use such tools, there are plenty of third-party offerings with better features. Bid Assistant never offered the ability to “snipe”, or bid at the last minute so no rival bidder had the chance to go higher. Perhaps it’s understandable that eBay couldn’t offer this: the whole point of sniping, after all, is to keep auction prices as low as possible. But without this essential feature for buyers, Bid Assistant was never going to take off.
Polish sellers list for 5c on eBay.com 5th-6th September
September 4, 2008
On 5th and 6th September there’s a special promotion for Polish-resident sellers, who will be able to list on eBay.com for just 5c. The offer is valid for auctions and BIN listings, but sellers must offer PayPal as a payment method and have DSRs of 4.5 or above for all four criteria. (And yes, apparently we have a few Polish readers. Cześć to you all!)
eBay.com changes : we’re no longer only a venue
August 20, 2008
Rather late in the day on this side of the Atlantic, the US fee and other changes have been posted.
eBay.com fee changes
There is no change to auctions or SIF listings: unlike the UK, SIF remains. Insertion fees for BIN listings are 35c across the board. 30 BIN listings, with the option to automatically renew, are now available.
Final Value Fees have changed quite drastically on a per-category basis: I’ll spare you the breakdown here, as eBay have already posted it.
Free shipping incentives
From October to December, sellers who offer free shipping will get free subtitle on their listings, and double PowerSeller discount if they’re eligible for this.
Special deals for Media categories
Until the end of the year, IFs for listings in Media categories which utilise pre-filled information are just 5c. This should help off-set the pain of a 15% FVF for the under-$50 sale price tranche.
Likely to cause more anger amongst Media sellers, however, is the introduction of maximum shipping prices. Perhaps some US Media sellers would like to comment on this, but the prices set seem very low to me: $4 for an antiquarian book looks like an impossibility. Sellers will be required to offer at least one shipping option within the maximum permitted range: they will also be allowed to offer other more expensive options for expedited or international shipping.
Expect to see this in more categories soon: Germany has this in categories as diverse as jewellery and mobile phones, so sellers not affected yet should not assume this change isn’t coming to them too.
No more paper payments
Checks and money orders will no longer be permitted as a payment method. Sellers with merchant credit card accounts will be able to accept payments via eBay Checkout.
Minimum DSRs for sellers
Sellers will be required to maintain minimum DSRs of 4.3 across the board, as in the UK. eBay suggest that around 96% of sellers already achieve this: those who do not are advised to spend the next two months improving their service (or realistically, opening new seller accounts).
eBay.com have stopped short of the radical format changes we’ve seen today on eBay UK. SIF remains, Store subscription fees remain the same. What’s significant about the .com changes is not the new fees, it’s everything else. On eBay’s biggest marketplace, they’re asserting more control than ever over the way that sellers list and the way that buyers buy: limiting payments to electronic transfers only, and the carrot-and-stick approach over postage rates, says very strongly that eBay is no longer “only a venue”. eBay will be accused of Amazon-izing their site: I think frankly that this is irrelevent. The changes are about offering buyers a predictable, safe experience, so that they can arrive at eBay and know exactly what they’re going to get.
UK, US, Germany make major announcements today
August 20, 2008
eBay will be making major announcements today regarding the US, UK and German sites. We expect to hear of fee changes, as well as changes to seller requirements, payment policies and Shops’ structures. Stay tuned – we’ll bring you updates as soon as the official announcements happen. We’re in for an interesting day.
eBay.com testing new view item page (still)
August 14, 2008
eBay.com have announced some changes to their proposed new “view item” page, and a further two months of testing. During that period, “a very small percentage of members will be randomly selected to see one of several new page variants” being tested.
Thanks to TameBay reader Seanie, we have a sneaky peek at one variant at least:
If you want to see how your own listings will appear, view one on eBay.com and click the link “switch to the new version of this page” at the top right. I’m pleased to say that my own slightly overcomplicated layouts don’t seem to be broken, but I’m extremely concerned that some essential elements are missing.
- No About Me page link eBay may have given in to pressure from sellers to allow website links from Me pages, but if they’re not linked from listings any more, the links are practically useless.
- No “listing frame” The current frame for eBay shop owners, with branding in the form of logo etc., and cross-promotion via list of category links down the left hand side, is gone. This is a great big blow to shop-owners, and for me, takes away one of the biggest points of having a shop in the first place.
- No red door The “red door” highlight for the shop/store link is gone. Instead, a text link to the store front is given equal prominance with a “view seller’s other items”: this is much less useful for buyers *and* for sellers, and should be removed. (Weirdly, the red door does appear before the item title. I don’t see the point of this.)
- Report item has moved to the top of the page I must admit, I’m ambivalent on this one. It will make reporting much easier, but it also slaps a great big “this might be dodgy” thought right under buyers’ noses. I don’t think I like it on such prime real estate.
- Related items and services is empty I’m hoping I’ll be able to choose cross-promotions to go in this area, but I’m perhaps being a little optimistic. eBay are also testing a new “merchandising module with seller opt-out”, with various positionings on the page, which will show related items from the seller of the item you’re looking at, plus other sellers. Sellers will be able to opt out of this altogether if they wish, which will mean that their items don’t show on other seller’s pages either.
- No button at the bottom The button to bid or buy from the bottom of the listing has been replaced with a not-very-visible text link. Buyers have to either click the button at the top without reading the whole listing, or scroll back up… did anyone usability-test this?
I think we can all see the way this one is going. The individual item page is no longer the seller’s sole domain: it’s slowly, and subtly, being de-branded back to a generic eBay page. Though sellers will still be able to do some branding within the description area, that no longer dominates the page. Instead, viewing an item is very much about eBay displaying the data that they want to present to buyers.
For sellers, I think this is a horrible step. The loss of the listing frame in particular is a massive blow to those who’ve built businesses upon selling multiple items to each buyer. And it’s a loss for buyers too: the variety of useful clicks-through to sellers’ shops have vanished, and that is only going to make shopping on eBay harder work. And that shouldn’t be what eBay want.
Asked if and when these changes will be coming to eBay UK, community manager James told the PS board that there is currently no date planned for changes in the UK: “I have been given assurances that any changes will be announced well in advance.” Let’s hope we can get through the spendy season without having to redo all our listings yet again.
What do you think? Love it or hate it? Leave us a comment.
eBay Motors’ price changes bad news for small business
August 14, 2008
Last night, eBay announced some major changes to pricing for North American Motors’ sites. The restructuring continues eBay’s current trend towards ’success-based fees’, moving more of the fee burden onto final value fees and away from insertion and other up-front fees. The changes are effective from September 2, 2008.
There’s great news for private sellers who might list just a couple of vehicles a year: on .com Motors, the first four listings in a 12 month period have no insertion fees at all, a saving of $40 per listing. The catch – and you knew there’d be a catch – is that the Successful Listing Fee (Motors’ fixed-price equivalent of FVFs) will increase from $50 to $125 (or $100 for motorcycles). Still, you’ll only have to pay this if you’ve sold your car, so it reduces the risk of listing on eBay Motors to pretty much nil.
Once you’ve sold four vehicles in a year, insertion fees are $20 and SLFs $100 ($15 and $80 respectively for motorcycles): the total fees payable on a sold vehicle thus increase from $90 to $120. I’d suggest that if you’re a business, you’re probably keeping a pretty close eye on your sell-through rate; you won’t want to pay $40 a time to list something that won’t sell, and you’ll list accordingly. So this new “you’re better off when you don’t sell your car” fee structure is going to hurt. Of course, the really huge dealerships like GM’s network have already negotiated their own fee structures with eBay, so the people who are really going to be squeezed are the small dealerships, who’ve just seen their fees jump by something like 33%.
If you think that’s bad, spare a thought for the poor Canadians: they’ve got the same new fee structure, but their old fee structure was much nicer. Insertion fees were only CA$4.25, so even for the four “free” listings, that’s an increase of $70.75 per sold vehicle.
Generally, I support eBay’s trend towards putting more of their fee onto sold items, and less upfront. But I can’t help feeling this hasn’t got the balance right. It seems rather to reward not selling your vehicle, because that’s where the big money savings are – and surely that can’t be what eBay want?
For the sake of clarity, these changes apply only to Motors’ sales on eBay.com and eBay.ca, and no announcement has been made for eBay UK or any other eBay site.
25% of listings hidden on eBay.com
August 5, 2008
I’ve been looking at how listings are presented in the new search results on eBay.com to check how they’ll affect sellers. Up to 25% of listings in some categories are hidden which leaves some current listing strategies no longer cost effective.
I searched for a “Laser Printer” with the brand “HP” in the “Computers & Networking > Printers” category and was presented with 813 printers to choose from, except I wasn’t shown 813 printers.
Closer examination shows that with the default 50 results per page and 12 pages there are a maximum of 600 items returned in the search – less than 75% of the available items. The remaining 25% plus items are hidden from view and can only be seen by clicking the “To view all identical listings” link.
Other searches produce similar results – searching for media such as writable “dvd disks” displays 923 items with less than 600 viewable.
Many large sellers have in the past relied on prominence in listing results to achieve sales. They’ve scheduled listings to ensure that they will always have items ending soonest, and the largest sellers literally have items ending every hour of the day in the categories they trade in, especially in consumable and commodity products.
Under Best Match, the default search on eBay.com sellers will no longer be able to rely purely on swamping their categories with listings. Buyers simply won’t see them, it’s time to use new tactics to ensure your items are presented to buyers.
One of the most important factors in Best Match will be listings with sales/bids. Multiple item listings with the most sales or auctions with the most bids will be considered better matched than those with few or none, so longer listing durations Shop/Store Inventory Format (SIF) could become more important and it’s not unthinkable that SIF in core will re-appear on eBay in the near future.
One thing is certain, flooding eBay with listings will no longer be a guarantee of success. New listing strategies will emerge but sellers need to be wary they don’t fall foul of the Search & Browse Manipulation policy. Listing items across multiple User IDs in order to gain more then 10 items per page of search results is likely to be considered manipulation.
Currently there is no indication that the choice and multiple item policies will be implemented in the UK. It’s been stated that eBay UK “don’t have the product solutions implemented in the UK” (PS log in required), to enable the policy changes to take place.
If anything these changes should benefit the smaller seller, as the dominance of larger sellers will be restrained compared to the past. How larger sellers adapt to maintain their market share is yet to be seen, but from now on it’s a whole new ball game on eBay.com
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