O.K., this latest change at ebay, where digital items can only be listed in the classifieds, with no order link, only an email response, has pushed me over the edge and I am done with ebay!
Over the past month I have tested some other auction sites mentioned below and have had zero success. The sites just don’t have the traffic that ebay has presently, but for some people, they may work out. If you’re selling a digital item the best way to market your product is to have your own website.
Personally I sell more on a bad day at my website then I sell at ebay in an entire month so my business will not be affected, however this is not true for 1,000’s of others.
Another thing I find really bizarre is last week some analysts announced a “buy” on ebay and the stock ended up for the week, closing at $32.94 The analysts put a target of $38. on the stock. Over the past year it has ranged from $25.10 to $40.73 The analysts obviously don’t sell products on ebay and don’t have any idea what’s really going on there!
Ebay’s earning come out this month, and they may be in line. The major changes they have made to their business have not been in effect long enough to be reflected in their earnings. If ebay stock rises anywhere near the $38. level between now and when they report their 2nd quarter results, then
SELL - SELL - SELL and then SHORT ebay.
I look for a substantial drop in ebay’s earning during the second quarter as a result of the major changes put in place in February and March. Millions of listings are gone forever, and all those listing fees and final value fees are now zero. That has to impact their revenue and earnings, not only for ebay, but for Paypal too.
I would not be surprised to see ebay test the year low of $25.10 in the next six months.
People who sell on ebay also buy on ebay. If you aren’t selling on ebay, you probably won’t be buying either. I won’t be! Add it all up and it looks bad for ebay.
Sorry to see them go (to hell). R.I.P.!
Effective March 31, 2008 sellers at ebay will no longer be able to list downloadable products in ebay auctions. Any downloadable item will have to be listed in the Classified section, or ebays “sandbox”.
The reason for this relates to the feedback changes that ebay has implemented this year. Hundreds or thousands of sellers have previously been selling downloadable products for a dollar, building a big list, building positive feedback fast, getting paid for it, and then selling those people higher priced products off ebay.
It was a very profitable business model…… but its history the end of this month!
Personally I have not used that model as ebay is not my focus, however 90% of my sales over the last 4 years have been a digital, downloadable product selling at $25.
There is a fairly simple work around and that is to sell your product as a physical product on disk, or a printed version of an ebook, and mail it to the customer. This creates more work and more expense for ebay sellers, along with the delay in receipt to the buyer due to shipping time. This could adversely affect sales as many, if not most, want it now.
I don’t know of any reason why you could not give the buyer both instant access along with a physical copy. Again more work as you will have to manually send product versus the instant delivery ebay use to provide.
The changes keep rolling on at ebay and I have to think that they are going to lose thousands of sellers, millions of listings, along with millions of dollars.
The new higher seller fees went into effect this past week at eBay and 1,000’s of sellers banded together to strike against eBay by not listing or buying and items.
Ebay reported a 3% drop in listings this past week so there was a minor impact produced by the seller community. Management at eBay could care less….. their attitude is to cater to the high volume sellers and to ignore the people who initially built the auction business for them.
Apparently buyers are also avoiding ebay. I listed 2 auctions before the fee increase and neither one sold. One of the items usually sells in 1 or 2 days at the Buy it Now price but this past week, nothing but fees!
Which is one of the problems with ebay…… When things don’t sell, the fees eat up any future profits. While you can relist and IF your item sells the second time around, they refund the insertion fee, they do not refund the other fees. This can quickly increase your ebay and paypal fees to 20% or more on $25 item.
My feeling is that a 5% final value fee is plenty for the greedmongers at ebay and a rollback should be done immediately!
The recently announced fee increase for sellers at ebay has caused an avalanche of internet entrepreneurs seeking new outlets to sell their items.
While there is no close competitor to ebay, there are a number of established, and some new outlets where people can sell their goods, for much lower fees then the current ebay fees and the new announced higher fees.
Below are four options that depending on what you are selling could be a great alternative to ebay. One of the common features is zero listing fees and completed sales fees of 0% to 5%. One of the four stands out above all the others and it could really take off big time.
The first site is eCrater.com I like this site and set up a new account and put up a couple of listings. They are hooked into Google’s Froogle, which hasn’t taken the world by fire, but this is a good option for many sellers. The interface can be a little challenging setting everything up, but overall the site rates a look. It is 100% free. No selling fees, no listing fees. Plus you get a free storefront.
Two other options are OnlineAuction.com and Bidville.com both of these sites have seen a huge influx of new registrations in the past 2 weeks. I’m not really crazy about either site and did not set up accounts, so can’t tell you about the interface. Depending on what you sell, these sites could work well for you.
My favorite new site is iOffer.com This site is really cool and could give eBay a run for their money. Imagine this, with a click of a button you can import both your ebay feedback and all your auctions, either active or not active, to the site. Stop imagining. You can!
The interface is great. Clean and simple. Zero listing fees. Final value fees vary but are lower than eBay. I really like the site and give it my highest recommendation! Check it out, I think you’ll like it too.
A large number of ebay sellers are banding together to declare a strike against the auction site to coincide with the exorbitant fee increase taking place this month.
The dates for the strike are February 18 - February 25, 2008. The new fees go into effect on February 20th.
While ebay has steadily increased fees over the years, this year’s increase has created the biggest reaction from ebay sellers. Since this information was released a couple of weeks ago, tens of thousands of angry posts have been made on blogs, including ebay blogs.
While many of the PowerSellers will not take place in the strike, they can’t afford to take that big of a financial hit, many are looking at alternative auction sites along with developing new websites to sell their wares.
You can get a domain name for less than $10 and hosting for $5-$6 a month, so it doesn’t take much to have your own website. Of course you won’t have ebay’s traffic but you can buy traffic or if you have list, you can let them know about your new site.
To get your domain name, we recommend WholesaleDomains.us
You can get hosting for your domain there, along with a website builder, or you can check out the rates at WiredHosting.us
It’s hard to tell if the strike will have any effect on ebay. Management is just blowing it off as it’s just a little ripple in the ocean. Personally I would like to see it turn into a tidal wave as their attitude and the new fees are offensive!
In the next post we’ll discuss alternative auction sites, with much lower fees, who are seeing exploding growth right now. Yahoo shut their U.S. auction site down 2 years ago, and Google is dragging their feet…..
eBay is on a roll with its public relations nightmare! Last week eBay announced that on certain transactions paid for through Paypal they will freeze or hold the funds for up to 21 days. The freeze will apply to transactions that eBay considers high risk.
PayPal estimates that its new hold policy will affect less than 5% of eBay transactions, and it emphasizes that only relatively untested sellers risk incurring a freeze. Merchants who have been registered with eBay for more than six months, have a feedback score of 100 or higher (meaning they’ve received positive comments for at least that many transactions), and have a “dissatisfied buyer” rate of less than 5% will never have their funds held.
But on a site that hosts an estimated 113 million listings worldwide at any given time, a policy affecting as many as 5% of those transactions puts millions in jeopardy. If funds are frozen after a sale, PayPal will release them after the buyer leaves positive feedback, three days after the item’s confirmed delivery, or at the end of 21 days without a dispute, whichever happens first.
What brought this on is hard to say as eBay seldom discusses any fraud that takes place on their site, but it’s possible that fraud is increasing due to the economic issues that are affecting many people now.
The new policy will affect new sellers and occasional sellers the most and they are likely to go elsewhere as most people selling stuff want their money now, not a month later.
For established sellers with positive feedback over 95% there should not be any problem other than the new higher fees that ebay is charging. See articles below about the new fees going in effect later this month.
The new leadership at eBay seems intent on really screwing everything up. Maybe Microsoft should buy eBay and Paypal instead of Yahoo.
Nah….. then it would really suck!
I have been trading on eBay since 1999 so I have been around since the beginning. Obviously it has changed quite a bit over time but the most consistent change has been increasing rates to sellers.
Here is what I’m paying now, along what I’ll be paying after 2/20/08.
One product I sell is a digital item that sells for $24.95 with Buy it Now feature. I also have the title in bold and I use the Gallery feature. My total fees per completed auction are running $3.36 in ebay fees along with $1.27 in Paypal fees, total $4.63 That equates to an expense ratio of 18.5% on a gross sale of $24.95
That is a pretty hefty expense as is. Now with the new fee schedule I will be paying ebay $3.83 plus Paypal fees of $1.27 for a total of $5.10 That works out to an expense ratio of 20.4% almost 2% higher than previously.
This ratio will become worse as the price of the item being sold increases. I just don’t see how eBay can justify raising their fees by this much. Just as when taxes are decreased payments increase due to increased business volume, you lower fees to generate more volume and more fees, you don’t raise taxes or fees to generate more income. Just the opposite is true in most cases!
Here are the new fees at eBay, straight from the horses mouth! If you can figure out how these fees are lower, please let me know!
New eBay fees for standard listings.
They have also changed the “feature fees”. Some up and some down. Here are the new featured fees.
I’m predicting that there is going to be a huge backlash from these new fees. Besides the eBay fees most people also have Paypal fees, so this is really getting out of hand!
To make up for this outlandish 60% increase in final value fees charged to sellers, eBay has generously decided to give everyone a free gallery picture, which saves you $0.35 WooHooo! eBay Rocks!
That’s right, eBay is dead. They just committed suicide! Last week while I was watching CNBC they were talking about Meg Whitman retiring and had an interview with her replacement.
They were discussing how they were going to lower fees for sellers to pump up business. Then yesterday I get an email from eBay announcing the new changes that will go into effect on February 20.
I expected to see some changes that would entice me to list and sell more but when I looked at the changes, the fees have skyrocketed! Huh?
Yeah, check this out. On listings priced between .01 and $24.99 they dropped the listing fee .05. Big deal! However, the final value fee has gone from 5.25% to 8.75% a whopping increase of 60%.
Are they nuts? Today their stock just hit a 52 week low at $26.00 It is bound to drop further as I expect a huge rebellion from eBay sellers, especially the Power Sellers.
Apparently they are begging Google to set up their auction site. I would look for Google to roll out a Google Auction site, in beta of course, by the end of the first quarter this year. They could probably roll one out tomorrow as I imagine they have a group working on it now.
While Yahoo already has their auction site, their heads are so up their ass that they will not take advantage of this opportunity, even though they have way more traffic than eBay, they will let Google come in and become the leader in auctions.
I welcome your comments. I really can’t believe how stupid the people at eBay are. They are literally killing themselves and don’t seem to care. Wakeup before it’s too late eBay!
