Ebay’s 2011 Spring Seller Update

March 16, 2011 2 Comments

If you are a seller on Ebay, then please pay attention to their 2011 spring seller update. This update is going to take place on two key dates, which are April 19, 2011 and July 6, 2011. The April 19 changes are dealing with auction style listings and the July 6 changes are dealing with auction-style for store subscribers as well as fixed price listings for store subscribers and standard subscribers. The main point to take away from this seller update is that Ebay is lowering fees, but including one important thing in the calculation of the Final Value Fees. Before, the final value fee was calculated based on the selling price of an item, but now Ebay is adding shipping on top of that. This is to reward sellers that provide free or low-cost shipping rates to their buyers. Sellers that provide high shipping rates will get hurt by this change. Below are the important changes being pushed by Ebay.

April 19—List Auction-style FREE with FREE Buy It Now—up to 50 items per month with new Standard Fees.

Under the new Standard fees, list Auction-style FREE, any start price—up to 50 items a month. Pay only if your item sells. Plus you can add a Buy It Now price to your 50 items FREE—set the price you want and grab buyers ready to act now.
The Standard Final Value Fee rate for Auction-style listings will stay at 9% and be applied to the total amount of the sale—including shipping—with a maximum Final Value Fee of $100.
Auction-style fees for Store subscribers will NOT change in April: If you sell more than 50 items Auction-style per month, an eBay Store subscription will most likely give you the lowest overall fees. If you don’t have an eBay Store, consider opening one now.

As always, eBay Standard fees are the right choice if you sell occasionally or sell to earn extra cash. If you sell more than 50 items a month, you’ll benefit from the overall discounted rates that come with an eBay Store subscription.

Get an eBay Store now.

See fee chart for details.

July 6—Fixed Price (Store and Standard) and Store Auction-style Final Value Fee rates reduced and applied to the total amount of the sale—including shipping.

Starting July 6, to encourage and reward low-cost shipping, Final Value Fee rates for Fixed Price listings will be reduced and applied to the total amount of the sale—including shipping. This change applies to both eBay Standard fees and eBay Store subscription packages.
Insertion Fees for Fixed Price listings will not change. As a Store subscriber, you’ll have the same discounted Insertion Fees you have today—list in Fixed Price for as low as 3¢.
Auction-style Final Value Fee rates with a Store subscription will also be reduced and applied to the total amount of the sale—including shipping.
When an international or 1-day shipping service is offered and selected by your buyer, your Final Value Fee is calculated on the least expensive of your options—your international/1-day option OR the first domestic service offered other than 1-day. If your buyer chooses international shipping and you specified free shipping as your first domestic option, you pay zero Final Value Fees on shipping.
Insertion Fees for Auction-style listings with a Store subscription will not change. Store subscribers can continue to list unlimited items Auction-style for as low as 10¢.

See fee chart for details. If you sell more than 50 items a month, you’ll benefit from the lowest fees with an eBay Store subscription. Use the Fee Illustrator to help determine which eBay Store subscription may best fit your needs.

Use the fee calculator to estimate what your new fees will be for a specific listing.

PowerSeller discount update

20% Top-rated seller discount continues, 5% PowerSeller discount retired
eBay Top-rated sellers will continue to receive a 20% discount on Final Value Fees for the item price portion of the sale along with the other great benefits of the Top-rated seller program such as:

Promotion in search for Fixed Price listings
Prominent logo displayed in search results and other key pages
Priority in the Value Box for items listed with the catalog
Priority in eBay’s home page merchandising
Priority in eBay’s paid search marketing

Beginning with the first invoice in June, the 5% Final Value Fee discount for PowerSellers who are not eBay Top-rated sellers will be retired. PowerSellers will continue to receive other great benefits such as:

UPS rate discounts
Unpaid Item Protection
Powerful Giving Program
PowerUp print and email newsletters
PowerSeller Discussion Boards
Health insurance solutions

Learn more about Top-rated seller requirements and benefits.

Below are the new Fee Charts:

Ebay Introduces a New Fee Structure

January 27, 2010 2 Comments

As Ebay’s business has struggled due to sellers moving their inventory to Amazon, they have finally thought of a good way to attract sellers back to its platform. Ebay has introduced a new fee structure for all sellers that will take affect on March 30th. The fee structure deals with fixed-price listings for the most part, but occasional aucitoneers will get a break from Ebay was well. It looks like Ebay is finally fighting back against Amazon for taking it’s sellers away, but who was to blame for that in the first place? Ebay in the past has made some changes that did not really bode well for their image in the eyes of sellers. Hopefully this will help them clean up that image a bit.

Occasional sellers on Ebay that have used their auction listings have been able to list up to 5 items per 30 days for free with 8.75% of the sale price or $20, whichever is less, going to Ebay when the item sold. Starting March 30th, occasional auctineers will be able to list up to 100 items every 30 days with 9% of the sale price or $50, whichever is less, going to Ebay. Now if you use Ebay randomly to get rid of your garage junk, then this will be a great relief to you as now you can list more and not have to pay as much. This is a good move on Ebay’s part.

Professional sellers that use Ebay as an income stream will see a smaller fee as well starting March 30th. Ebay will be rolling out a four-tier pricing strategy that will decrease listing fees for their subscription models as well as sellers without a store. Listing fees for sellers without a store will be 50 cents. Listing fees for a basic store will be 20 cents, 5 cents for an anchor store, and 3 cents for a premium store. This pricing change should really help retailers and store owners to see their bottom line decrease upfront. This is something that all sellers like to see and I think Ebay will hear postitive vibes from this change.

If you are interested in more information, then you can visit Ebay’s Spring 2010 seller update and be able to view all the changes that are taking place. If you are an ebay seller, we would like to hear from you about these price changes. Will this help you with your business on Ebay? Will this bring you back to Ebay if you left? Let us know, we are intrigued!

Ebay’s Letter to Sellers

November 25, 2009 0 Comments

If you have been following the Ebay issue that happened on Saturday November 21st, then you are aware that Ebay was supposed to assist both buyers and sellers for the auctions that day. Ebay has sent out a letter to it’s sellers detailing what they plan on doing for them. The only issue that we have heard is that Ebay has not sent the letter to everyone that had auctions close on Saturday, which is irritating the selling community quite a bit. We will see where it goes from here. The good thing is that buyers that were bidding on auctions that closed during the outage were given a 10% coupon for up to $100 off their next purchase, which is a nice gesture. Below is the letter to sellers from Ebay. Give us your thoughts.

____________________________________________________________

Dear XXXX:

By now you might be aware that between 9:45am and midnight PST on Saturday, November 21, eBay search was down with searches returning limited or no results.

We know this is a very serious disruption, especially as you are ramping up your sales for the holiday season. Because you had listings ending during or within an hour after the outage, I wanted to let you know, personally, what we will be doing to support your business and protect your eBay reputation.

First of all, this outage will not negatively impact your feedback or detailed seller ratings (DSRs) in any way. All auction-style listings completed during this time will be protected from negative and neutral feedback as well as DSRs below a five star rating.

In addition, we will not expect you to fulfill Auction-style orders completed during this time if you feel the search outage prevented you from realizing the full expected price from your auction-style listings that closed during the outage or within an hour after the outage. It’s up to you whether you want to fulfill the item in the interest of good relations with your buyer or cancel the transaction.

If you do plan to cancel a transaction, we ask that you contact your buyer within the next 48 hours (by end of day Tuesday, Nov 24). For your convenience, we’ve drafted some language below that you can use in your emails to inform the buyer of your intention and let them know this cancellation was due entirely to an eBay issue and not you as a seller.

If you had Fixed Price listings completed during this time period, you would of course be expected to fulfill sold items as usual.

Second, in keeping with eBay’s outage policy and doing what’s right for sellers and buyers, we are taking the following actions for listings that ended during or within an hour after the outage (9:45am Saturday – 1:00am Sunday PST):

We will refund all associated fees for Auction-style listings and refund pro-rated fees for all active Fixed Price listings during the outage. This refund should be reflected in your next eBay invoice.
We will remove negative/neutral Feedback and detailed seller ratings (DSRs) lower than 5 stars given by buyers for affected Auction-style listings.
We will alert the eBay and PayPal resolutions team in the event that a claim of item not received is filed for an affected listing.
We will be sending a 10% coupon up to $100 off to buyers who won Auction-style listings during the outage for any inconvenience.

We fully understand the impact of an outage of this scope on you, our valued partners. We sincerely apologize for the disruption to your business. I want you to know that we are continuing to focus our teams and resources to ensure a smooth and rewarding holiday selling season for you.

Sincerely,

Lorrie Norrington
President, eBay
___________________________________

Suggested email for notifying your buyer of cancelled Auction-style transactions:
Dear Buyer:

As you may know, for a period of time from Saturday, November 21 to Sunday, November 22, eBay search was returning limited or no results. See the official eBay report. Unfortunately, the item you purchased from me on [date] was offered through an auction-style listing affected by this technical disruption.

I wanted you to know that as a result of this issue, I am cancelling this transaction and any payment you made will be fully refunded. In addition, eBay will be sending you a 10% coupon up to $100 off for the inconvenience. Now that eBay search is fully restored, I will be relisting this auction [today]. I sincerely hope you will bid again-and win!

If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact eBay via the “Contact us” link at the top of the eBay homepage. Thank you for your understanding. I look forward to your future business.

Sincerely,

Ebay’s latest glitch

November 24, 2009 1 Comment

If you were searching for items on Ebay on Saturday, you probably found out that you weren’t getting any results or at least a very few. This was because Ebay’s search service was down all day Saturday and was restored by Sunday. The best part is that Ebay states that it will compensate sellers for the outage, but we are wondering how they plan on doing so. Will each seller get the same amount or will it be based on auctions or listings that were closing on Saturday? Will it be every Ebay seller, or just a select handful that gets compensation? These are the questions that we have for Ebay sellers that were affected by this issue. Let us know how Ebay plans on compensating you.

With these glitches and severe changes of their platform, how does Ebay expect to survive against Amazon in the ecommerce space? Ebay was the one in auctions, but from what we have heard and seen, they are moving more to fixed priced listings and they will never be able to compete with Amazon in that space. It just won’t happen because Amazon is just too big and their platform works well with a simple fee structure that anyone can adhere to. We will see the future of Ebay soon enough.

iMark Interactive