eBay - free to sell, but not to buy for much longer?

rollingmoon

Not the most reliable news source, but it's the first place I've even seen a mention of this...

"However, buyers are set to face a charge. How it will be applied is yet to be determined though it will take effect early next year, the company said."

https://news.sky.com/story/ebay-selling-fees-are-scrapped-to-boost-to-reselling-13225638

goodfella66

Once you start meddling with a proven format you are in trouble. They've obviously got someone new in at Ebay who is "trying to make their mark". Probably ticks every box going apart from the most important..."are you capable of running a company?".

This is an interesting article from the USA where a couple of companies have tried loading fees on to buyers and reversed the decision after just a few weeks.

What Poshmark Reversal Says about Buyer Fees

It must have been dire to admit to a mistake after just 3 weeks.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

The Daily Mail put the article up first, a day early it seemed and they quickly pulled it, the other news articles just look like a clone of that from Mail. 

The bit about fees for buyers doesn't have an actual quote from eBay so could mean anything, they could be looking at some kind of subscription (although I'm not sure exactly what benefits eBay could offer with their current set up), they could be looking at charging a fee only for using the seller funds, a general fee or it could just be a mistake in the article. 

If they do impose a general fee on each purchase I'm not sure eBay has the loyalty and brand strength to pull it off but Vinted charge a buyer protection fee and all marketplaces now have to add VAT for certain transactions so imposing a very small fee might be feasible for them, when you have millions of transactions taking a few pence each time adds up I guess. 

eBay is generally cheaper than Etsy, they are also generally cheaper than Amazon for a fair range of products, it seems to be branded stuff which is better priced on Amazon as they have the buying power smaller businesses don't. 

Personally I think that eBay as a company is very lazy, you look at Etsy, Amazon introduced handmade in response where as eBay, nothing, I'm not sure how well handmade works on Amazon but it would fit perfectly within eBay's current set up for probably very little effort but I guess they can't be bothered? 

So maybe slapping a few pence on each purchase is easy money for them but until eBay actually announce anything it's anyone's guess what they are planning, if anything. 

soolin

Again this is the Vinted model - they charge what is effectively a buyers premium under the guise of a buyer protection fee. 

swingaloo

I read (but I cant find the article now) that there is going to be an 8% surcharge for buyers to pay when they make a purchase.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

8% sounds crazy to me, I can't see many people being happy about that. 

martindow

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

8% sounds crazy to me, I can't see many people being happy about that. 

I suppose it depends how it is presented.  It could be that you bid £10, say, £9.50 goes to the seller and 50p to ebay.  The split could be itemised in smaller print and it does not have to be very obvious to a buyer how the money is divvied up.

I can't see how ebay can be viable if it continues to to operate with no charges to either buyer or seller apart from business sellers.  Someone has got to pay for running and hosting such an enormous site.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

martindow said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

8% sounds crazy to me, I can't see many people being happy about that. 

I suppose it depends how it is presented.  It could be that you bid £10, say, £9.50 goes to the seller and 50p to ebay.  The split could be itemised in smaller print and it does not have to be very obvious to a buyer how the money is divvied up.

I can't see how ebay can be viable if it continues to to operate with no charges to either buyer or seller apart from business sellers.  Someone has got to pay for running and hosting such an enormous site.

I guess if it's thrown into the item price it's not that noticeable to buyers but the way described basically makes it a seller fee? 

If they are taking 12%+ from businesses and 8% from buyers that's 20%+ which with VAT on top is close to a quarter of the price, that's without the new regulator fee and if applicable promoted listings fee and international fee, I don't see eBay has enough buyers or brand loyalty to justify taking so much. 

Annual gross profit for eBay was 7.2 billion USD in 2023, I'd imagine a fair amount of that comes from business sellers compared to private and the idea behind the free fees is the cash is more likely to spent on eBay, either resulting in fees from businesses next time it's spent or going round and round with private. 

RFW

martindow said:

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

8% sounds crazy to me, I can't see many people being happy about that.

I can't see how ebay can be viable if it continues to to operate with no charges to either buyer or seller apart from business sellers.  Someone has got to pay for running and hosting such an enormous site.

Business sellers have always accounted for much more of a share and Ebay than most people realise.

Their biggest problem has always been in retaining buyers to get more big business on there. They've lost out to Amazon for a long time and are a much smaller business as a result.

With absolutely no insight whatsoever I would guess that Ebay are running private sellers fee free for Q4 and Q1, '25 and will see what happens. They're probably onboarding a few bigger sellers as a result. If they can get a few big ticket selling companies on there then they won't need any other fees. If, for example, they could get Apple as a seller then that revenue would more than likely cover all the private seller fees in one hit.

If that doesn't work then they'll probably float different ideas. I'm impressed that they're being quite so proactive.

One other thing they could consider is ads for private sellers. So you won't pay an upfront fee but you can pay for higher visibility.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

RFW said:

They've lost out to Amazon for a long time and are a much smaller business as a result.

It's interesting as in the early days (early 2000's I think) eBay had more traffic than Amazon for quite a period but eventually Amazon took off to become what they are today and eBay sort of stagnated. 

RFW said:If they can get a few big ticket selling companies on there then they won't need any other fees. If, for example, they could get Apple as a seller then that revenue would more than likely cover all the private seller fees in one hit.

They've had "outlets" in the past (back in the days of "Daily Deals"), high street names, some of which come and go, they have Toolstation on there now for example but it does make you wonder how many customers are funnelled off to the Toolstation site after that first purchase.

It wouldn't surprise me if certain brands aren't paying the full FVF fees. 

With companies like Apple it does make you wonder if eBay's reputation ties in with products associated with such a strong brand, and does Apple want to move away from it's own eco system by selling direct on a place like eBay?  

RFW said:

One other thing they could consider is ads for private sellers. So you won't pay an upfront fee but you can pay for higher visibility.

They already have this for all sellers with promoted listings standard (only pay a % when you sell), promoted advanced (pay per click) and now off site ads (for Google I believe). 

I don't see why you'd pay to advertise your eBay listings on Google, if you were going to that expense it seems better to have your own site and advertise that instead. 

eBay has dabbled in fulfilment 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/postage/fulfilment

but doesn't seem to come anywhere close to FBA. 

They constantly run 20% on selected sellers where I believe eBay cover some % of the discount but seems to be a case of stuff is the usual price by the time the discount is applied in a lot of instances. 

Amazon seems to have thrived due to everything else they do, Prime, own tech, eBooks, music, video, AWS yet eBay has never ventured down the path of being anything more than a place to buy and sell stuff. 

RFW

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

RFW said:

They've lost out to Amazon for a long time and are a much smaller business as a result.

It's interesting as in the early days (early 2000's I think) eBay had more traffic than Amazon for quite a period but eventually Amazon took off to become what they are today and eBay sort of stagnated.

I've used both since the dawn of time (!). Amazon was a trickle of sales compared to Ebay back in the 2000s. Now it's totally reversed. There's barely much point in my having listings on Ebay. I'm actually 10-20% cheaper on Ebay and the same products still don't shift.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

RFW said:If they can get a few big ticket selling companies on there then they won't need any other fees. If, for example, they could get Apple as a seller then that revenue would more than likely cover all the private seller fees in one hit.

They've had "outlets" in the past (back in the days of "Daily Deals"), high street names, some of which come and go, they have Toolstation on there now for example but it does make you wonder how many customers are funnelled off to the Toolstation site after that first purchase.

It wouldn't surprise me if certain brands aren't paying the full FVF fees. 

With companies like Apple it does make you wonder if eBay's reputation ties in with products associated with such a strong brand, and does Apple want to move away from it's own eco system by selling direct on a place like eBay? 

There are plenty of outlets and they do get their own fee structure. I don't think Ebay mind too much if it gets buyers moving on to the sellers' main site, that's not a terrible selling point.
On Apple I was thinking of recon products, Ebay have been pushing that for some time and there are lots of Apple resellers doing well from older/recycled tech. Apple will also have warehouses full of returned products. Macbooks that have had scratches on, etc.. They have a way of getting rid of that now but Ebay would be a good platform for that. It also gives them a bit more "green" credibility. Amazon and Apple don't get on too well, so it could be an interesting liaison. All in my mind though, I've not read anything about it anywhere!

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

RFW said:

One other thing they could consider is ads for private sellers. So you won't pay an upfront fee but you can pay for higher visibility.

They already have this for all sellers with promoted listings standard (only pay a % when you sell), promoted advanced (pay per click) and now off site ads (for Google I believe). 

I don't see why you'd pay to advertise your eBay listings on Google, if you were going to that expense it seems better to have your own site and advertise that instead. 

As a business seller that had passed me by. I imagine there's not a big take up on personal sellers so they may start pushing it more. Amazon Ads is big business for them with a big variety of types of ads you can run. I know Ebay's ads is still in development. I'm a bit of a wiz with Amazon Ads but there's not much I can do with Ebay ads yet.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head said:

eBay has dabbled in fulfilment 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/sellercentre/postage/fulfilment

but doesn't seem to come anywhere close to FBA. 

They constantly run 20% on selected sellers where I believe eBay cover some % of the discount but seems to be a case of stuff is the usual price by the time the discount is applied in a lot of instances. 

Amazon seems to have thrived due to everything else they do, Prime, own tech, eBooks, music, video, AWS yet eBay has never ventured down the path of being anything more than a place to buy and sell stuff. 

I used Ebay fulfillment, it was the worst experience of anything I've ever done in business, ever! They lost most of my stock and then couldn't work out what they'd done. It turns out they'd sent most of it in one go to a customer. Mistakes can happen but it went downhill from there. It took me several months to get paid from them and then they told me I owed them money! Ebay didn't want to have much to do with it. It was a couple of years ago now and I'm triggered from the mention of it! As far as I can tell it's still active. I wouldn't use it again if they paid me.

Amazon are an utter pain to deal with but they have the sales that I can't get anywhere else to match. I've been trying something new over the last few months, using several marketplaces, my own website, with Google ads, social media ads and more. Only Amazon is getting me the sales. Just on their company, they could stop selling anything tomorrow and they'd still be one of the biggest companies in the world. Most people don't know much about AWS (Amazon web services), it accounts for about a third of the internet and 75% of Amazon's profit.