Free Gallery promotion is now permanent! (but BIN & FVF fees increase)

StaffsSW

http://www2.ebay.com/aw/uk/200808201105432.html

Free Gallery
We’re happy to confirm that we’re removing the fee for the Gallery listing upgrade (was 15p on eBay.co.uk and 20c on eBay.ie). This makes permanent the promotion that was due to end on 30th September 2008.

Success-based fees
Overall, we are continuing our commitment to moving the cost of selling an item on eBay.co.uk and eBay.ie away from the front-end insertion fee and increasing the final value fees, so that the majority of fees are paid only when you successfully sell an item.

Sellers can continue to enjoy large discounts on final value fees based on volume of sales and good service.

Fees to fit your business
We are also providing more tailored pricing options to fit the different sizes and business models of Shop owners and Buy It Now format sellers. This will help provide a more vibrant market place with even greater choice for buyers and greater opportunities for all sellers.

Find out more about the fees changes:
eBay.co.uk: http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/
eBay.ie: http://pages.ebay.ie/pricechange08/

In a further push to rid the site of smaller sellers, Final value Fees will be increasing from September 24th - up from 7.5% to 8.75% on auctions ending under £30.

Basic Shop Fee up from £6 to £14.99
Shop insertion Fees up - basic insertion up from 3p to 20p
Featured listing up from £9.95 to £14.95, or an eye-watering £44.95 if the best match is to be ignored!!!

frivolous_fay

Now that's more like an announcement.
I like the gallery bit anyway...

iieee

The gallery/FVF changes make it cheaper to sell things under £12. So this is good news for me and my junk bargains.

steviebabes

The big news is on shop visibility - same as normal listings from 24th September.

Contains_Mild_Peril

I'm not really surprised - I think they did something similar on ebay.com a while ago, and I'd have been a bit miffed if we didn't get permanent free Gallery here too.

StaffsSW

steviebabes wrote: »

The big news is on shop visibility - same as normal listings from 24th September.

Good exposure, but the insertion fee has increased. I still have a number of gift lines that have been sat in my shop since last christmas that currently costs me 6p per month, but this will now increase to 20p per month. Most of those lines could absorb those, but if I think back to how I used to sell DVD's, the margins were tight on unsold and subsequently shop-parked items, so it would not be viable to continue that method.

One small point to note is that higher level Shops will now be available to registered business sellers only, and I would not be surprised if this became a criteria to basic shop subscription as well.

The initial indications suggest that a lot of volume sellers will be better off with the new structure, although low value sellers will struggle to justify a shop unless they have more than 75-100 sales per month.

My preliminary calculations suggest that I will be better off, but I will need to change my business model slightly - I offer a lot of items with inclusive postage, but in order to reduce FVF's, I will have to split the item charge and P&P charge. I'll also reduce the number of listings I have, but increase the available quantity per listing - why spend 40p listing 2x10 items, when I can spend 20p to list 1x40 items..?!

ArmitageShanks

Rubbish news, probably take our ebay bill through the thousand pound mark a month.

Increasing shop price to £14.99- scandalous. as well as the FVF.argh!!

StaffsSW

ArmitageShanks wrote: »

Rubbish news, probably take our ebay bill through the thousand pound mark a month.

Increasing shop price to £14.99- scandalous. as well as the FVF.argh!!

It depends on what your strategy is though - if you sell lots of low value, individual items, then yes, you'll be shafted. However if you currently sell lots of the same item, then 1 insertion fee will cover any number of sales.

I can see this killing off the pre-owned DVD and CD market on ebay though - margins are tight enough on these even when using the 3p SIF listings to park unsold items, but if listing fees are going to be 20/40p per item, then I can't see many sellers perservering.

Unless of course selling prices rise - but it's the buyers who end up worse off then.

echelon101

stevew8975 wrote: »

I can see this killing off the pre-owned DVD and CD market on ebay though - margins are tight enough on these even when using the 3p SIF listings to park unsold items, but if listing fees are going to be 20/40p per item, then I can't see many sellers perservering.

.

Yup, originally you could pick up a PC game for about £5 incl pp now I am hesitant of even putting up 3 games together let alone pc bits I have acumalated.

I am small seller and I feel shafted.

glenni_2

Right thats my ebay shop account closed for good now then. I dont plan to give these money grabing wotnots any more of my money.

Ignore all the emails and press releases the nitty gritty is here. http://pages.ebay.co.uk/pricechange08/



Basic shop fee up 150% to £14.99 a month

For a single item selling at £50 - Final selling fee up 50.45% to £4.95 (not including your paypal fees)

Insertion Fee up 111% to 20p

Shop Picture gallery was 9p now free - whoop de bloody woo!

Additional picture hosting remains at 12p

Yes all items now get increased exposure in the main listing but new buy it now items will no longer get International visibility. Add all this together plus the double whammy of paypal fees on top which ebay now forces you to accept means that for me the total cost of selling an average item through ebay is now around 13% to 15% of its value. Not so long ago it was only 9 or 10%

Are there any viable alternatives to ebay around???

Have looked at ebid but there is very little activity on there at the moment.

kevinyork

Looking at the eBay boards and other sites the general opinion seems to be:

Medium-large seller of a set inventory of items will be better off

Small seller or seller who has a wide number of different or individual inventory items or of low value items worse off.

However, the thing I cannot get into my head is that the calculations being used to compare costs under the current and then the new system assume that you sell the same volumes under the new system in order to give you a comparison. Surely, if all listings are fighting for the same visibility then the chances of a buyer finding yours is pretty small? I can see initially that some sellers will simply list say 100 of an item in say 10 listings for each of their inventory items and flood the site-even though it sounds like they would be better off listing 1000 items on one listing.

Also, whilst eBay may manipulate search results and default to 'best match'. Many buyers simply order their search results by price which makes eBay's criteria for how listings are displayed in searches redundant.

This is a very dangerous time to implement these changes. If it badly affects sellers' sales in the lead up the Christmas I think those same sellers will not be around to try again next year. Its also a lot for sellers to take on when many are thinking about their pre-christmas selling strategy.