Projects Possible

eBay has recently announced a change in their fee structure.   While some fees are going down, others (the Final Value Fee) is increasing a whopping 66%.  There has always been a “buzz” around eBay fees and whether the approximate 10% of a sale price is really worth what you are getting from eBay.   Sellers on one side of the fence argue that they couldn’t open their own venue and attract as many potential buyers for 10%, while the other side argues that they price the small sellers out of the marketplace particularly if items being sold are lower margin items.  Each seller needs to make their own decision if eBay is the right place for them.

The first thing that I did once I heard of the increase is I started making comparisons using my typical transactions.  I was calculating things manually until I found a great little tool over on Auction Bytes.   If you go to their eBay fee calculation page you can do it right on the screen or you can play the what-if games on your own PC by downloading it as an Excel spreadsheet.  For me I found that on my lower end items that I always placed Gallery pictures on I will save a bit.   Higher priced items is where I find the FVF kills me… of course that would assume that I SELL the items since the FVF only effects those I sell.  The real determining factor on whether this is an overall increase is based on your sell through rate.

In just my brief playing around with the numbers and reading the announcement a few things came to mind

• eBay is going to be a venue with a lot more STORE items because they’ve lowered the prices for insertion… the FVF is still killer but you can at least get your items out there for people to see.
• The seller that is going to take the biggest hit is the higher value sellers with the larges amount of sell through.  
• Because the insertion fees were lowered the up-front risk is less and therefore I expect we will see the volume of items increase giving the buyers a better selection.   Perhaps eBay is trying to re-attract buyers with selection?
• Reserve has become expensive on the lower end items so you will see many more items that were previously reserve priced either NOT listed at all, or listed with a higher opening bid.  I suspect this will reduce the number of .99 cent starting prices that sellers often use to create a “buzz” around their items.

As I said previously you will need to decide if the changes are for the better or worse for you in your situation.  I know they will cause me to change how I list, and I think to some extent what I list as well.  Perhaps I will actually start looking at and USING some of the alternative auction sites that are out there…

Alternatives… YES there are alternatives to eBay.   Why not take a look at some of the following:

ePier , BidVille, HiBidder, WeBidz

If you’ve got experience with these or others please share!

This post was read 11 times until now